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Do your value your employees, and their input?
(This is the fifth in a series of self-assessment articles on defining workplace culture. Click here to go to main article.) Of course you value your employees. Without them, your company would go underground. However, some companies give a lot of lip service to employee value without following through when it comes right down to it. This is one criteria where there is a right or wrong answer: if you do not value your employees, you should not be running a business. So let’s take a look at whether your company values the workforce as much as they say they do. Do you offer benefits? There are states where the law does not mandate that employers provide health insurance, paid leave, etc. That does not mean that you should not offer them. It’s a good-faith gesture that will be returned in kind: you take care of employees, employees are more compelled to care for the company. In addition, you’ll have a stronger workforce when they are healthy and not stressed about paying their dental bill. Offering benefits is certainly costly to the company, but the benefits you’ll receive in return (loyalty, happy workers, and more productivity) are well worth it. Additionally, it will make you a good person, and good people win humanitarian awards and get plaques they can hang in their offices. Who doesn’t love plaques? Layoffs: necessary, or evil? Would your CEO take a pay cut to avoid layoffs? Or would they click their tongue and think “what a shame” as they take off in their company jet to their 3rd home in Barbados? Lay-offs are sometimes unavoidable, but the effort made to avoid them is invaluable. Hooray for minimum wage? Do you pay minimum wage? Because here’s the deal: the annual cost of living in the last 9 years has risen much higher than minimum wage. This means that your minimum wage employees are living below the cost of living. This is currently being rectified, which is why there have been a few small raises in the national minimum wage in the past year and a half, but there is still a sufficient gap; enough to keep working families below the poverty level. You may think “well, it’s not illegal, so it’s not wrong.” But like Chris Rock said: "Minimum wage means that we would pay you less if we could, but it's against the law!" How’s that for valuing employees? Is input encouraged? Okay, now that we’ve established all of the above, this is one point where you can be flexible. How you value your employees on day-to-day things is something entirely different. Do you encourage your employees to come up with ideas, reorganize procedures, and troubleshoot problems? Do you then implement this feedback? Or are employees encouraged to follow corporate strategies and customs put in place through many years of trial-and-error? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you value employees? Ten being full benefits, competitive wages, and encouragement and implementation of input; one being no plaques for you. Click here to proceed to next self-assessment article, Individualism vs. Collectivism. Click here to return to main article, Defining Workplace Culture.
The copyright of the article Employee Value in Workplace Culture is owned by Melissa Dylan. Permission to republish Employee Value in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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