Why 'being a good company for your employees' should be your priority as an entrepreneur?
When things go poorly, all reasons become reasons to leave. It creates a spiral. The company declines in value, the best employees leave; as the best employees leave, the company’s value goes for a free fall. And that’s when the trench between ‘being an outcome-driven company’ and ‘being a good company for employees’ is highlighted.
Being a good company does not appear to be of that much value or matter when things go well. But it can be the lifeline when things go wrong. When every reason would seem to be a reason to leave, the best employee can be retained only if s/he likes the job and the company.
We have to be cognizant of the fact that in the neck-to-neck competition about maximization of resources and time-bound delivery, companies appear or are made to be exclusively focused on the outcome. But there are other factors that construct this scenario as well; such as:
Mindset:
The mindset of “People don’t want to work” in this 21st century when the number of people who have joined the workforce is unparalleled, seems to be a bit outdated. Rather, it is a conclusion that is validated by the approach where the companies try to minimize the individual of a mere worker. That’s when the umbilical cord of an employee’s emotion with the job gets cut down and the journey of micro-reluctance starts. We are in an age where companies are not a single-brain community.
The culture should target a climate where employees feel proud to have their individual success milestones achieved as a byproduct of the company’s overall success.
Question for reflection: Are we taking our best brains and encouraging them to share their most developed skills to take the company forward?
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Doctrine:
“Everyone is replaceable”. That is a common doctrine and a hard sentence generally gets mentioned during tough and mature negotiations. It’s true to a great extent but not a universal one. The good time of a company is achieved when the functional heads become the CEOs of their respective functions. This means the systems are working well, there is no indecisiveness, and checks and balances are at the right degree. Now when you take that CEO out of the system, you invite indecisiveness, strike down checks and balances, and consequently cause a systemic breakdown. Now from the dependability and cost perspective, the person who was driving it will get into a new paradigm and create the system again; but for the company the cost is going to be higher. Because it will have to dissolve the whole system first, find a capable candidate, and then help that person to set up the system. The sunk cost or the unproductive expenditure is very high for the company.
Question for reflection: In “Everyone is Replaceable”, ‘everyone’ stands for both individuals and companies for each other almost equally. So why are companies continuing in the delusion of monopoly?
Approach:
Companies’ mindset of monopoly over the job market facilitates the adoption of the approach of “My way or High way”. In the name of management, and the quest to do muscle flexing, the natural tone of administration turns out to be very close to what may be called ‘policing’. In the field of law, it is said that a society that is highly legalized is primitive and less productive overall. Same way, a company that is overmanaged, eventually turns out to be a small boxing ring. That leads to the sidelining of the very purpose of the company or the employee. People start advancing their agendas by means other than merit and contribution. It becomes neck to neck. And all these situations give way to activities that have nothing to do with advancing the business.
It is essential to focus on what advances your business rather than what makes people fall in line. Its the demand of today’s age.
Question to reflect: As an entrepreneur, are you objectively clear about what all behavioral and disciplinary components are quintessential for advancing your business?
Having great people in the company requires great ambitions, in fact, such which have the capability to outlive the individuals themselves. However, those highly talent individuals will put forward the requirement of being in a paradigm where they are measured by the magnitude of successes in reference to the core of the business. The promotion of politics, mediocrity, and oblivious discretion will push them away. And that triggers the spiral of decline in the value of the company and attrition of real talent.
A Good Company for employees invites good people and that creates a positive spiral - Good people increase the company’s value and a high-value company attracts good people.
Hence, it seems judicious to observe that being a “good company” is an end in itself. It also seems to be the master key to unlocking the potential of the company and traveling the uncharted path, consummating the blue ocean, and making a fortune out of it. People will come and go in the company’s life, but when they go, they may bring or send more companies to make the path easier if they feel ‘the earlier one was a good company’.