Loyal Employees are your Most Valuable Asset!

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I’ve recently re-activated my LinkedIn Profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/haso-keric-007a0a141/ and I came across a well to the point article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/loyal-employees-your-most-valuable-asset-brigette-hyacinth/ (worth the read)

An employee’s relationship with their manager sets the tone for their level of commitment to the organization’s success. Gallup research shows that a mind-boggling 70% of an employee’s motivation is influenced by his or her manager. It’s no wonder employees don’t leave companies; they leave managers. Disengaged employees can cost companies millions of dollars from lost productivity, damages from employee negligence and negative publicity due to poor customer service. Organizations know how important it is to have motivated, engaged employees, but most fail to hold managers accountable for making it happen.

Why is it that companies will have training sessions on “Sexual Misconduct”, “Interviewing Skills” and more… But not so much about Engaging their current employees, reading their employees and sometimes asking your employees “What do you want to work on”.

Anyways a wonderful Article, I couldn’t have written it better myself and why do so many people tend to agree with it. Is this just the American cultural norm to not give a bleep about your current workforce and always entertain a new one?

I’ve been in a situation where I worked 90 hours all Summer long, every weekend and every Sunday - they couldnt even spit out a 20$ Starbucks Gift Card, which lead to back issues and I asked for a reimbursement on all my Chiropractor visits (200$) and instead the Company Lawyer was involved, the result was it was my bed at home possibly. :slight_smile: Sighs, enough soap-box. Cool Article. One day I will be THE Boss and watch my employees arrival and departure time and start shipping the hard workers to Disney Land with their families :slight_smile: Pay off some mortgages on the way too. (If you see me file for a LLC, you should apply) :smiley: Also if I don’t have the raise I’ll cut my own salary to accommodate since I am the boss I am sure I am somewhere in the 6-figures. (#Leadership #Caring) I can eat Ramen Noodels once a week.

The biggest problem I see is old employees see new ones get paid “Market Rate” and because they are OLD Employees they only get to climb up with the 2.5% increases, instead of making them “MARKET RATE”. You know Bill, we invested in you 3.5yrs, you know it all but sorry you are going to climb up at 2.5% every year, despite the Market’s Supply/Demand paying everyone 22K more, in order to get it you must Quit and re-apply. (But we don’t hire Quitters, Life’s not fair but thats the way it works in America)

Just curious I am sure there are some Managers here; who have more insights on office politics, who can share their POV and Thoughts.

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I recently became Team Lead at my current position, first thing I did was purchase new Keyboards/Mice and Made sure everyone had 2 equal monitors. They didn’t ask for it, some said “Why?” I said because it’s stupid to program on 19" monitors with various colors. Not even the same brand. Some Items I purchased myself because I have no time for office politics of who will reimburse 100$. They can keep it.

What’s wrong with improving a place WITHOUT ANYONE RAISING A PROBLEM or CONCERN but just because you think its a normal thing to do. Next Email went out, why can’t we get better chairs for everyone; when these folks are 45 they will have back issues.

Next up I noticed stacking books to raise monitors… Already started purchasing w/ my own money Stands.

Received a BONUS, That’s Discretionary? Find 4 worthy people on your Team; give them Gift Cards either way the Bonus you got was extra money you didn’t plan for, leave a little for yourself but give some away. Don’t be stingy.

Everyone did a phenomenal job on that deadline project? Friday, don’t come in; enjoy your day off if anyone has a problem tell them to talk to me. Thats your comp-time. Plenty of jobs in America i’ll take a bullet for team, if they really put in blood sweat and tears.

Why’d you bring in Starbucks for everyone? Because we got lot of sh*t to do, caffeine up and let’s get to work.

Can I come in 15min late, to take my 6yr old to school? Will you be more energized after it and committed? Yes. How about you take her to school every day this week, need all the energy we can get. If it all works out, you are going to keep taking her to school every day for the rest of the year!

Look Bob, HR said they can’t give you the $2.00 raise you want, I think you are worthy of it, let me talk to them… Hey HR transfer 3.2% of my pay to Bob, cut mine down or I will leave. Then tell Bob he got it, without telling him how. (After all you got 6% this year and you barely will notice the cut)

As long as you deliver results, why not be flexible and awesome. Who cares about the Handbook, the Handbook doesn’t describe what to do if you work till 3am (18hr day) or work all Christmas Holiday because you needed something done by Jan 1st.

Someone working alone in the weekend on BarTender Labels? Stop by bring Pizza or go do some work yourself “moral support”.

I bet you there plenty of you here that have a manager that doesn’t even know when you come in or leave the office, they just think 8-5. Some of you when was the last time you were given a handshake and told “Good Job!”, it’s when you mess up they notice you isn’t it? (Like cause an infinite loop in your code on the server lol)

Don’t wait for someone to ASK… Anticipate and Act, heck you prob spend more time with your team than your spouse you oughta byt now know their problems, bank balances, issues, habits, what makes them tick, what pisses them off, what they like to eat and more. If not, you need to be either replaced or start talking to your team more :slight_smile:

Fight for your Team! Speak up for your Team! or move aside stop squatting the position; someone else who will is begging god every day for a job like yours. :slight_smile: Make your team Purpose Driven, not Paycheck Driven.

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I will apply for sure. I wish I had a Lead like you. Amazing :star_struck:

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Awsome !! the dream manager.

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I 100% agree on treating people equitably, using managerial discretion and assuming positives - the reality is typically 95% of your employees will rock up to work every day and do an honest days work for a fair wage but you will have 5% ers who will be persistently late, absent, resistant to change, disruptive, moaning and lazy and too many leaders and organizations focus their efforts on those 5%, creating rules and policies that penalise everyone rather than either marginalising the 5% or working them out of the business. That only breeds resentment in the 95%.

Treat folks like adults - including recognizing that they have adult responsibilities and private lives outside of work - and strangely enough they will behave like adults

I do deviate slightly though on your comment on market rates - businesses need to be competitive, if folks aren’t leaving then a business is never going to seek to get them up to market rate - if folks start leaving and cite money as the reason then that is when they look at it. Similarly if a new hire doing the same job is getting paid market rate, that is unfortunate but the reality is if you stay in the same job for a long time you will get single digit increments in the good times and maybe nothing in the bad times - if you want big increments you need to change jobs or take on more and more responsibility.

Also as per my opening statement - it is about treating folks equitably not equally - so if they demonstrate a degree of flexibility around work I will do the same for them when they need it - I’ll even pay it forward in anticipation of them being flexible with me at some future date. When someone has genuinely gone above and beyond then by all means offer praise, attaboys and incentives but if they were really just doing their job - sorry sometimes that means you need to work late - or indeed an 18 hour shift was actually a result of poor planning/in response to their error then I would actually say thank you and then work with them on a lessons learned to make sure that we identify the root cause it never happens again.

I also think that there is a danger in your approach of mistakenly identifying rewarding long hours as being solely good leadership - could equally be bad leadership as you are ignoring that you do not have enough resource/asking folks to do stuff they can’t do/over-committing/poor planning or you just have incompetents who like firefighting. I would much rather we are resourced properly and appropriately plan things to minimise out of hours/weekend/holiday working so as folks get a decent work life balance.

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I would disagree with this methodology. People generally don’t start looking for new jobs because of pay. They start looking because they are unhappy with their leadership. Then often times, they discover that they have also been suffering low pay. Also, if you are in situation in which you don’t trust your leadership, (which is often a real reason people leave) they don’t feel comfortable being honest with why they are really leaving. Not burning bridges is important, and it’s hard to express yourself honestly when leaving without the appearance of burning bridges. Pay is the easiest crutch to fall back on when pressed, because it’s easily measurable, and a common excuse. But it’s rarely the whole story.

Market rate pay, and falling behind, is one very measurable lack of understanding your employees worth. Waiting until people start leaving to address that situation will not make you a place that people want to work. If your strategy in business is to pay below market rate to be competitive, you better be honest with your employees when they are hired. While it’s possible to employ this strategy, you will need to have compelling compensation in other areas of work to make up for it, and unless you are a non-profit where the greater good is the primary purpose for someone to work for you, I doubt will be a very successful one.

So you are setting yourself up with a reactionary management technique, and by the time you correct, you’ve destroyed your credibility.

Trust takes years to build, and seconds to destroy.

I agree with this. Judging one’s output is more important but more difficult. If someone is really good at their job, and does 12 hours of work in 8 hours, did he go above and beyond? Or is that just him doing his job? That’s pretty tough to judge, and that judgement is really what separates average bosses from great ones.

Interesting discussions for sure.

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Brandon I have always made sure my folks are paid close to market rate and also incentivized them (do good work with quantifiable benefit, learn and get qualified in new things etc ) so as I can easily justify raises but I have always managed small teams so the numbers were in the grand scheme of things, small.

However few of us work in a vacuum - companies frequently introduce across the board pay freezes when times are bad or allow collective bargaining to negotiate company wide increases and frequently this will be an area where managerial discretion becomes irrelevant.

Also the reality is that anywhere claiming to pay market rates will typically do that for the roles that they have the most employees fulfilling - so for example in a manufacturing business it will be rates for the folks who work on the shop floor that they are going to keep competitive - it is just too much effort to do this for every role - it is up to the respective manager to manager this and ultimately if you are arguing for indirect staff, who are frequently viewed as overhead - incorrectly in my opinion - to be paid more you will frequently find it falls on deaf ears.

I agree though that people decide to move on for a variety of reasons not just money.

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Oh, sorry. I assumed from this statement

That that wasn’t the way you approached this. My Bad.

Yes, That’s the challenge in balancing all of this. I think that’s one of the things that @hkeric.wci was arguing too. Great managers go to bat for their employees. And I was also assuming a smaller subset on the type of employees mostly related to the type of people here. But if you were to expand that, Yes there will be different approaches for different levels of employees. Certain roles are definitely more of commodity and are treated a little more like that. It’s the nature of business. Like everything, it depends. :wink:

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I see the leader is only using one hand …

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My only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. :wink:

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