SmallBusinessNewz

TriNet released results from an interesting survey today, looking at how small business employers are evolving their human capital management practices in the face of a down economy.

The TriNet Recession Practices Survey polled businesses in the technology, financial, and professional services fields, and found that nearly half of respondents are "economic optimists." This means they see market conditions as at least as good as they were in 2008.

34 percent viewed the economy as worse and 18 percent viewed it as much worse than 2008. Other highlights include:

- more than half of respondents say they will hire fewer employees in 2009

- 28 percent of economic optimists are planning to hire more employees in 2009 than the previous year

- only 4 percent of economic pessimists are planning to hire more in 2009

- about one-third of respondents made staff reductions between October 2008 and February 2009

- 1 in 4 plan a reduction in force by June 2009

"Small businesses need to be agile and continue to evolve their human capital management practices in order to better align with market conditions," said Jack Midgley, vice president of products for TriNet. "Fast growing companies are realizing in hard economic times they need to be smart about their employer practices in order to remain competitive and survive this recession."

The survey also showed that small businesses are implementing a broad range of capital cost-control measures already. Salary, incentive compensation, and benefit funding changes were found to already be under consideration or in place in most of the respondents’ companies. Many companies have avoided "employee out of pocket" practices, like reduced workweek, reduced or mandatory paid time off, across the board salary reductions, but are now seriously considering them. The whole survey is available here.