9 Winning Actions to Take as Recession Threatens

At Gartner, we see opportunity with nine key actions across three main areas. You could call it a recession playbook, although successful digital leaders will not wait to see whether recession is officially confirmed before they act.

Manage resources and spend strategically

1. Trade-offs. Create a prioritised list of the resource trade-offs you will make in cost management and budgeting. Develop a clear narrative that explains your thinking and that you can communicate to stakeholders to build buy-in.

2. Cloud migration. Accelerate movement to the cloud as part of the purposeful digitalisation of critical business needs. This movement makes it possible to reduce the impact of rising energy costs and to create a more nimble adaptive organisation.

3. Workflows. Radically challenge collaboration approaches, workflows and processes to make them faster, simpler and more agile.

Example: Using a shared framework to evaluate cost initiatives ensures that resources are traded and cut for the greater good of the business—in this case, to capture efficiencies while preserving funding for critical digital initiatives. Strategic cost optimisation that moves conversations from cost to value helps ensure resource decisions are strategic, not tactical.

Listen now: Inflation! Looming Recession! Businesses Need a Plan.

Be agile in securing digital talent

1. Work models. Fundamentally rethink the way your organisation leverages its people. Consider flexibility, location, hours, part v. full time, and in-house v. outsourced.

2. Employee value proposition. Clarify your employee value proposition (EVP) so you are positioned to attract and retain the right digital talent.

3. Digital talent. Aggressively seek to secure the right digital talent needed to help you accelerate your digital plans. Snap up talent cut loose from digitally native companies that retrench.

Example: Of candidates who accepted a job offer in 2021, 49% considered at least two other offers concurrently. Using a data-driven approach helps you unravel the real competition for skills and hone your search for digital talent accordingly. Labour market and skills analysis tools like Gartner TalentNeuron™ use large data sets to identify unseen sources of digital talent—from those with the appropriate skills in adjacent roles and functions to emerging talent pools that represent untapped locations for new IT operations.

Find out more: The Future of Work Reinvented Resource Centre

Accelerate key digital and technology initiatives

1. Customer and employee vision. Reimagine your customer and employee value propositions to accelerate the requisite digital investments.

2. Predictive and autonomous. Invest in predictive and autonomous digital projects that make your organisation faster and leaner, including in its decision-making.

3. Digital metrics. Narrow the metrics you use to measure digital initiatives and monitor their progress to ensure you focus on the few that align with outcomes.

Example: Sixty-two per cent of boards say improved customer loyalty is the top expected outcome of becoming more digital. To build a clear digital road map today, you need a hypothesis of customer needs in 2–4 years’ time. Once you have that, prepare to leverage emerging technologies to meet known and projected customer needs. This applies equally to employee needs. You might, for example, ask if your tech road map should include the metaverse so you can provide immersive corporate learning experiences for employee onboarding, continuing education and sales enablement.

Download now: 2021–2023 Emerging Technology Road map