Business Health And Profitability It's All All About How You Treat Your Staff

In the end it’s all about how you treat people. What goes around comes around. The profitability of your business and the overall health of your business depend on no small part on the standards and practices of how you treat and interact with your staff and employees. It’s all people treating people well.

All you have in your firm or business, no matter how you see it, comes from other people – in this specific case your staff members. Do more than treat them one well one day a year – at the company picnic or on “Secretary’s Day”.

Human beings are the resource that drives most companies - their products, their services, their creativity and ability to invent and adapt their attention to detail. We are not living in a world, yet, of robot employees. It’s all a case of “karma” and “what goes around comes around “.

When revered and treated with respect great people will take a business to the highest levels. On the other hand there are companies whose culture sees employees as expendable. Management is somehow up there on top floor. Basic employees, who indeed are the lifeblood of the enterprise, are really not regarded with such merit at all – of little value, intelligence and merit. It’s often quoted as a sad truth that most employees use more intelligence on their daily drive or commute to work , than they are ever use , utilize or even are asked to perform , while on the job or jobsite.

You may of heard the mantra, repeated oft time that “Recruitment is our number one priority”. While continual recruitment of talent should be a top priority – even during those times when the business does not have immediate openings, it should still be considered priority number 2. At the top of the list should be employee retention because while good people are hard to find, great people are much harder to replace.

The short version of your company’s leadership philosophy should be that of two words “Best to Hire Correct”. When management hires the correct people, it is bound to happen that great results follow. Few leadership techniques will ever have a lasting impact with the wrong hire. And yet many in “upper management” will think that such a policy and practice can be set up and implemented in an afternoon.

If done well and properly the crowning touch of any business and its culture are when the business itself is composed of a core of the best people setting the standard and example for the rest to follow and emulate. This all follows from a philosophy of respect and appreciation of employees and other employees as valid human beings. How else could it be else wise?

Good attracts its own type. It’s all a process of growth and synergy. As management guru Kirk Stephens is fond of saying “Human Results Growth and Practices do not in themselves grow, develop and mature arbitrarily – that is all of them out of thin air”. You have to pay your bills so to speak and devote proper time and energy to the task and task on hand. In such an atmosphere and team spirit new candidates will be attracted. Not only that but it is much less likely that good employees will leave resulting in a net loss to the firm and its vibrancy and vitality. It is always said and quoted as a maxim in terms of employee loss - that “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence”. However in today’s business and financial world, recent studies have shown that money is not the highest and only motivator in the retention of staff and valued employees. Lifestyle and professional challenges pay a much greater role in the decisions of staff of when and where to look for employment elsewhere – or to stay at home. Most employees have invested a fair amount of time and energy in their current positions and relationships at work. Why start elsewhere and have to “prove” them all over again. On top of that the relationships on the job count – whether it be actual interpersonal relationships, business relationships to “get things done” and even favors owed and earned. Finally it’s often a case of “the devil you know, rather than the one you do not”.

In the end the success, organizational health and profitability of any business, or indeed any organization, whether it is in the short term or in the longer term, all depends on how well staff is treated and appreciated. It’s as simple as that.