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It’s hotting up, the evenings are long and the cricket season is well under way. It finally feels like summer has arrived. However for many UK workers, it feels like the black cloud of recession will never lift.

I heard on the radio recently that the charity Drinkaware is warning that more people are turning to alcohol because of job cuts in the UK. Drinkaware says that out of the 2,253 unemployed adults they surveyed, almost half now drink more during the day. Of these people, two-thirds blame their heavy drinking on their redundancy.

And things don’t look like they are going to get better any time soon. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that unemployment rose to 2,261,000 in the three months to April, the highest total since November 1996.

It’s not just the private sector workforce that is suffering. According to Unison, the public sector trade union, the morale of local government staff is at an all-time low, with only half saying they would recommend their jobs to others (even with their protected pensions).

At Szerelmey we are making every effort to try and keep the morale of our staff up. After all, we are all in the trenches together, fighting the same war. We recognise as the management team that it is our responsibility to lead from the front and unite our staff so that we can emerge from this recession intact (and, indeed, we are intact to date).

We need to motivate the sales team to get out there and battle through. If we are all doom, gloom and defeatist, the whole company will feel negative and it will all become unbearable.

Communication is key to keeping our staff feeling positive and secure in their jobs. That way, nobody feels like they might be in for a rude surprise when they arrive at work on a Monday morning.

Communication is key to keeping our staff feeling positive and secure in their jobs. That way nobody feels like they might be in for a rude surprise when they arrive at work on a Monday morning

My rules for surviving the recession are:

• Be honest with the workforce. That way no one feels alienated or uncertain
• Increase communications with staff. Don’t hide out in your office hoping it will all go away – it won’t
• Maintain staff morale – everyone understands that cut-backs are necessary, but try and maintain some spending on morale-boosting initiatives. PR is just as important within the company as it is outside it.

We are fortunate at Szerelmey because the company’s size means that we have an open dialogue with the staff. Our size also makes us adaptable; we can remodel without causing serious organisational problems. Naturally we are not immune to cut-backs and staff redundancies, but any cuts we have to make will be clearly communicated.

Recently we have asked our staff to make small changes to the way they behave and operate in order to keep basic costs down – for example, delivering documents by hand or by mail rather than using couriers and taking public transport wherever possible. These are small changes but it is amazing how they all add up.

In general we have been successful at getting the expenses down. Everyone understands why these economies are necessary, and because our staff’s contracts include a profit share, everyone will see the benefit from taking such actions.

We also recognise that we have to keep focusing on our marketing. We continue to attend as many networking events as we can to develop and maintain those key industry relationships. Also, we have reduced, but not entirely got rid of, our client entertainment budget.

We all know this year is going to be tough for the construction industry, but we will have our Christmas party as usual to celebrate all the staff’s hard work and we will move forward with a positive attitude. There are painful alternatives but none of us want to go there – there are too many dark clouds.

Greg Verhoef is director of Szerelmey