Providing resources even when the cupboard seems bare.

It seems like an obvious statement: No one can do their job properly without the necessary tools. But in this rocky economic climate, ensuring sufficient resources for employees is trickier than it sounds.

During a national economic downturn, astute managers know that employee engagement must be valued more than ever. As companies are forced to trim their budgets and even resort to layoffs, they must place a high premium on keeping the remaining employees dialed in to the company’s mission so that they can rebound and thrive. But creating a vibrant climate for employees means giving them sufficient resources to do their jobs with excellence.

That situation creates a conundrum; Cut the budget, or provide employees with resources? In making those choices, decision makers must bring equal doses of creativity and honesty to the table, along with an acute awareness of their employees’ day-to-day challenges.

In a recent AIM study on employee engagement, 19.8 percent of employees who were planning on leaving in the next 12 months said it was because they did not have adequate resources to do their job.  In many of those cases, the company might have truly been unable to provide what employees needed because of financial difficulties. But as they lost their best people, their productivity issues suddenly became a lot more serious than numbers on a spreadsheet.

“It’s tempting to assume that your employees are grateful just to have a job and would never dream of leaving during a recession, but that would be a costly mistake,” says an article by Canada’s The Alliance of Sector Councils. “A 2008 study published by the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that downsizing can actually lead to a higher rate of turnover, which can leave organizations without the critical people they need to keep operating through the tough times. Although they may not be actively looking, unhappy employees are usually open to new opportunities if they present themselves.”

With an unlimited budget, the path to keeping your best people happy in their work would involve providing them with whatever resources they needed to excel. But that ideal must be met with a dose of economic reality, and that blend will become palatable when managers can keep the lines of communication with their people wide open.

If bottom-line realities make it impossible to provide the top resources, then managers should tell their employees about that tension, revealing the difficulties they face at the budget table, and also projecting a vision for a future in which higher profits lead to overflowing employee toolboxes."

Be open and honest with your employees—share both what you know and what you don’t know about how the economy is affecting your business,” the TASC article said. “Whatever you do, don’t rely on email for communicating difficult news. It lacks tonality and can seem very cold and uncaring. Have regular staff meetings so employees have an opportunity to ask questions. And if you don’t know the answer to a question, it’s okay to say so.”

Once the door of communication is open, the other key to making much out of little in the area of resources is creativity. Just as a mother can stretch the contents of her pantry to feed her family when funds are tight, a good manager can give an employee what he needs to succeed even if it means ‘pinching pennies.’

To be creative in providing resources, managers must know the inner workings of the company so well that they can conceptualize new ways to set the stage for excellence. Some of the most groundbreaking inventions in history have risen out of scarcity, and the company that sees a downturn as an opportunity is the company that will thrive when others are just trying to survive.

An old adage says that “A workman is only as good as his tools.” That statement is true in corporate America, but authentic communication and creativity can expand that statement to ring true even when those resources aren’t easy to come by.