When Do You Tell Your Employees They Are Valuable?
Before another employer does…and other hard-won employment wisdom
Today I’ll share some key lessons on what it takes to make good employment decisions by describing some of the bad ones I saw.
I bore witness to many different philosophies on how to run an organization. In forty-plus years of work life, I had both the benefit and anguish of working for several companies, some small and some worldwide in scale.
I like to watch people and I watched management over the years I worked. It always seemed they all went to the same school or studied the same manual. That’s because I saw the same mistakes repeated.
“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work 12 hours a day.” — Robert Frost
This describes well a phenomenon that I saw over and over again. And then, to make matters worse, if the employee was hourly before the promotion, they almost always became salaried after.
Ah, I remember the lessons of this one well. Fortunately, I saw the handwriting on the wall ahead of time and never partook.
Who among management ever came up with the idea that if we give an employee a title, they will happily submit to our plan to work additional hours? Brilliant!
“Oh, but we will pay you more.” It never panned out. Once you started working the additional hours, your pay rate decreased compared to hourly. Uh, oh!
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” — George Carlin
The last company I worked at made it a habit to have weekly barbecues as a way to say thanks to the employees. Little things like that are always appreciated. They also threw in hats and shirts too. Nice. They also paid annual bonuses based on longevity and company profits.
Here’s the rub with the “bonus” payout. As the company grew, the pie to share with the employees might have grown with the profits, but the added employees made the pie slices smaller. Though the company had more significant growth, the employees did not benefit from that.
If you think your “valued” employees won’t see your sleight of hand, you are wrong.
It initially starts as grumbling among the employees by comparing notes and then results in sometimes bad attitudes and decreased productivity. Worst case, some quit without telling you why.
“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.” — Peter Drucker
I saw the following remarkable thing in many companies. Let’s take a successful salesperson and promote them to the sales manager position. What do you presume, then, occurs in many situations?
- You have removed a productive salesman from the ranks, and your volume decreases.
- You have mistakenly assumed that someone good in sales will be equally good in management.
Every time I saw this happen, both of the above happened. Way to go, management. Great move.
“Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.” — Andy Stanley
So, here comes the gut punch. It refers to the subtitle: Losing employees because of self-inflicted mistakes.
Here is one classic example: Touting an employee benefit that does not directly put money in the employee's pocket. In other words, they can’t take that benefit to the bank and make a deposit.
This tactic was often wrapped up in health insurance “benefits.” “Hey, look, employee, we are giving you this as part of your compensation. Aren’t you excited?”
“My boss told me to start every presentation with a joke. The first slide was my paycheck.” — Anonymous
I worked for a rather large company in the Pacific North West before I retired. Annually, corporate management would show up and do what we called a “dog and pony show.”
Essentially, it was a ra-ra session to tell the employees how generous the company was to them and how fortunate they were to have a job there. This company for years bragged about how competitive their pay was compared to the rest of the industry.
Sorry, boss, being competitive and being a market or industry leader are not the same. Do you want to foster loyalty among existing employees and attract new employees? Pay the highest rate, not the average.
This never appealed to the employees because we knew how much every other company paid them for the same positions. Again, self-inflicted.
Now listen, I get it because it was beat over my head many times. A company can only afford to pay what the market will allow.
My answer to that is to ask this question: Would that be your owners or your shareholders, or both? Those folks drive compensation; the employees don’t. And that’s why you lose employees, management.
That company across town knows what you pay and will recruit your people for just enough more. When you lose bodies, you lose production, which results in revenue loss.
And lastly, to make the point, you then go and spend money to advertise for new employees, spend the money to train them, and have to wait for a couple of years for them to come up to speed and be productive. Self-inflicted, there it is again.
Another revenue enhancer is retaining employees. It’s a lot cheaper to keep employees than lose them.
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar
Companies, do you want to keep employees, especially the good ones? Study your competition and do the exact opposite. In other words, think outside the box. It may be an old saying, but it still works.
Readers, did you see your company making other obvious mistakes? Share your experiences in the comments.
Thanks for reading.
