Are Employees Your Organization’s Greatest Asset or Just a Necessary Evil?

Ever since I was introduced to the writings of Peter Senge and his ground-breaking book, The Fifth Discipline, I’ve tried to apply a systems perspective to my interpretation and analysis of business, economic and social trends. So it’s from that point of view that events in the U.S. economy concern me so much and lead me to the conclusion that our political and business leaders are losing sight of a fundamental pillar of this country’s storied economic success of past generations. What’s good for people is good for business.  As the current economic landscape (and recent history) would suggest, the opposite is not true…at least not if it disregards the first.

The featured article in a recent edition of BusinessWeek titled, The Disposable Worker, is a must-read analysis of the plight of U.S. workers. Through interviews and sound trend research, authors Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst describe the gradual, but painful decline of both pay and job security for the vast majority of American workers. More importantly, they hypothesize about the potential consequences for both employees and employers, at least at the macro level. A couple of highlights:

(more…)

In last month’s post, I featured an interview with values based top employer Nurse Next Door. Like other employers of choice I feature in Road to Respect, the workplace culture at Nurse Next Door empowers employees to speak up, to raise issues, to talk about problems and ask for help. Speaking up is a cultural norm that promotes organizational success.

Unfortunately, the cultural norm of speaking up experienced by the employees at Nurse Next Door is the exception rather than the rule. In most workplaces, employees routinely make the choice to put up and shut up. In cases of disrespectful behavior like harassment and bullying, a first incident typically turns into a pattern, one that has dire consequences for the individuals involved and their workplace. Productivity drops, absenteeism rises, teamwork and service delivery degenerate.

Research shows that individuals on the receiving end of disrespect at work spend up to 50% of their time on the job dealing with the effects of the disrespectful behavior. New ideas, creativity and innovation are stifled by the fear that disrespect spawns. Math may not be my strong suit, but it is fairly obvious that if employees are spending almost half their time focused on something other than the job that they are being paid to do, that is a serious business problem.

(more…)

In November 2008, my book Road to Respect: Path to Profit was in the final design stages. I had chosen five Employers of Choice to illustrate the main theme of the book – that a strategically built values-based culture with respect as a core value was simply a business imperative for success in today’s marketplace.

It never occurred to me, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, to start looking for my heart’s desire, in this case those Employers of Choice, in my own backyard. However, when I heard about the 2008 B(ritish)C(Columbia) Business Best Companies survey, I thought I would attend the awards banquet to learn how local companies compared to those I had chosen to feature in Road to Respect. Not surprisingly, much of what I heard that evening from the winning companies reflected what I know to be true – treat your employees with respect, let them know they are valued, support them to be successful and they will produce the superior business results you are after.

I was fortunate that evening to be seated at a table with the team from Nurse Next Door, one of the Best Companies nominees, including co-founders Ken Sim and John DeHart. Nurse Next Door came in 8th in 2008. 2009 they moved up to number 1 and were named the top employer in BC for firms with over 100 employees.

(more…)

I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas. It was “their” holiday. It wasn’t until I met my late husband that I experienced the “magic” of Christmas; the amazing smell of a living tree, the fun of decorating, the comfort of lights on dark winter evenings, the eggnog, the gingerbread and of course, the chocolate. I was hooked!

On December 6, 2001 my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had his first chemotherapy treatment a few days later and spent his last Christmas in a hospital bed. He made me promise to have Christmas as usual for our five year old daughter. I will never forget being in our basement on Christmas Eve, after having put out the milk and cookies for Santa, crying and wrapping, lamenting, “I can’t do this! What do I know about this? I’m Jewish”.

Although my husband has been dead for seven years, we still celebrate Christmas, along with all of the Jewish holidays. As the Jewish holiday of Hanukah is also celebrated in December, on Christmas Eve I have a Chrismukah dinner. Instead of mashed potatoes, I serve latkes, potato pancakes, aka round hash browns. For dessert, along with the Christmas goodies, there is suganyot – an Israeli jelly doughnut, another Hanukah treat. The kids play dreidel, a traditional Hanukah game which involves a spinning top and a pile of gold chocolate coins (or money). My friend’s daughter had so much fun playing dreidel at our house, the following year she asked Santa to bring her a dreidel for Christmas.

(more…)

In 1908 a new management program was introduced at Harvard University. The program’s goal was to educate those who would become the leaders of the large corporations which were emerging as a feature of the American business landscape. The program’s founders believed that corporations should be run in a manner that reflected the interests of society. The vision of the program, one still reflected in the motto of the Harvard Business School today, was “To educate leaders who make a difference in the world.”   

One hundred years later a lot of questions are being asked about the difference those leaders have made and whether or not the interests of society have indeed been respected.  The gap between rich and poor has grown increasingly wide, as has the gap between executive compensation and the wage of working men and women.  Ethical values seem to have been replaced by egotism, narcissism and greed.

In the face of the economic meltdown, a group of Harvard MBA students decided it might be time for a change. They started asking some questions:  What would we want our class to be remembered for? What should our legacy be? What can we do to ensure that MBA becomes synonymous with integrity, professionalism and leadership? From those questions the MBA oath was born.

(more…)