FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Karate World Champion Says Companies Must Motivate During Tough Times
Toronto, Ontario, Canada – September 28, 2009 – According to former Canadian National Karate Team member and Karate World Champion Clint Cora, Canadian companies must keep their employees motivated, especially during these tougher economic times. What makes this martial arts expert qualified to make such a claim? It turns out that Cora is also a former sales and marketing executive who spent over twenty years in the corporate world.
Certain Staff Are Vulnerable If Not Motivated
Motivation is required for any employee but is even more crucial for those in roles that have more direct consequences on revenues such as company sales forces. Another is customer service staff since they have direct customer interaction. Production teams also fall into this category because overall quality is impacted by the efforts of assembly lines. And of course, those who see their colleagues being laid off are also vulnerable if not kept motivated.
During booming economic periods, many companies had incentive programs to help motivate employees. They knew that if some employees were not happy, they could easily jump ship to other companies.
Having observed his former industry, Cora says, “I’ve seen top pharmaceutical sales representatives jump and quite often, these high performers would end up with direct competitors. Competitors love to snap up high performers much like professional sports teams do.”
Some management might think that since these are tougher times, the risk of losing valuable employees to competitors would be much lower with the perception that most people would be happy just to have a paying job during recession. There might be a lower need to motivate employees since there probably won’t be much jumping around to other companies.
Both Company Loyalty And Work Quality Can Be Affected
However, Cora claims that this may not be true as he states, “Security of a job is not the only motivating factor among many employees, particularly younger ones. Even though it’s true that many may stay with a company without much motivation from management, it doesn’t mean that they will be motivated to perform their jobs at high levels. Quality as well as loyalty will suffer as a result with potential negative impact on bottom lines. Companies still need to motivate during both good and bad times.”
Cora, now a motivational and diversity speaker as well as author of the book “The Life Champion In You”, knows about motivation as he went from losing a parent to suicide to become a karate world champion. This journey combined with his professional background enables him to motivate business audiences with a very unique angle. He also has a monthly motivational newsletter and audio podcast at his website www.clintcora.com. With the present state of the economy, we can all certainly use as much motivation as we can get, especially from a world champion urging us on through these tougher times.
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