This could be the worst recession for 100 years, according to Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. But is this one qualitatively different from previous downturns? Is it possible that we’ve learned from our past mistakes and that employers are, in fact, trying to safeguard the collective knowledge and wisdom that we lump together under the title of human capital, so we can come out fitter and stronger when the economy bounces back? Has the penny finally dropped?

Last week I chaired a roundtable debate at which the answer was definitely ‘yes’. HR leaders lined up alongside representatives of employer bodies and the trade union movement with a common message: we are all in this together, and what matters is to hold our nerve and to keep on investing in people rather than slashing and burning for short-term gain. It’s not easy: particularly in manufacturing, where lean techniques have already stripped out all the fat, but increasingly the public sector too is having to do more with less.

But despite the scale of the challenge, people passionately want it to be different this time. Just today I received an email from a firm of Cardiff-based lawyers offering ideas on alternatives to redundancy. Dolmans Solicitors would presumably earn a lot more fees if their clients did resort to redundancy rather than cutting back on their marketing budgets as they suggest, but as they said in their email: “It’s not about crisis management, but long-term planning and realising there’s got to be a different way of looking at things.” Good for them.

On a larger scale, the CIPD and Acas have teamed up to offer guidance on how to manage your way through the downturn, which every employer ought to get their hands on without delay.

My question to you is, what’s the picture like where you are? Are you seeing organisations adopting innovative and far-sighted solutions to preserve jobs while improving their performance? Or is this a Groundhog Day recession?