Look outside the organization. The stuff of life that drives each employee, if you’re the leader in a corner office, you’re never going to hear it. You might say that’s why you have HR, to find those things out, and they might do a great job. But it might also help if you have an outside party to help get a grip on some of the real — sometimes ugly — things that affect your people in life. In a lot of instances, people in a company might not want or have the opportunity to tell the boss what is going on in their lives. That’s why I think it’s important to have someone in a company, an employee advocate, who is from the outside and not on the payroll. Because there is always the possibility of that fear of telling someone on the inside, that it’s going to find its way up to the boss, and they don’t want that to happen, for whatever reason.
Every business leader today needs to be focused on one employee at a time. I’m appearing in this issue of Smart Business, and to me, smart businesses are always looking at their employees and taking care of them, both at work and, when possible, away from work.
We go to work, we have to work at each of our jobs, but we also have a family and a life that drives that presence, and if you show up to work thinking about medical problems or an argument with a spouse, a child in trouble or your personal problems, that is going to hold onto you, and you need a way to talk it through. Once you can somehow open that up, make that connection with employees, talk it through with someone who they know will not use anything against them, it is enlightening and freeing to the point that it could revolutionize what we do in corporate America.
Realize what is at stake. The fact of the matter is that the government says that every single employee represents $4,500 worth of fraud a year. You think about absent employees, unplanned absences, the so-called Monday morning flu, costs a company a lot of money each year. You talk about turnover and keeping talent, the battle for talent is very real, so if you have an employee who feels that he or she is not appreciated, not cared for, there are a lot of other companies looking for top talent, and that top performer could go there.
If you put methods in place to care for employees emotionally, physically, spiritually, whatever they need, it creates a definite culture shift within a company. We see it all the time. It’s the difference between wanting to go to work and having to go to work. The employer becomes someone more than just that person who sits in the corner office and tells you to get the work done. They become the person who realizes that it takes special people to do the jobs they do, and employees realize that the boss will care about them and what is going on in their lives.
How to reach: Marketplace Chaplains USA, (972) 941-4400 or www.marketplacechaplains.com
