AMiable Solution #74: Exempting What Counts

What’s a quick, easy way to reduce your bottom line in a big way?  If your response is “personnel reduction,” you’re itemizing your staff in the wrong column.  To have a happy work force and a successful organization, think of employees as assets, not expenses. 

Although employees do represent a significant portion of your expenses, they also represent--more than any mission statement or written company communication--the heart and soul of your organization.  If your employees are dissatisfied, uninterested, or not invested in what they do, your clients, customers, or members will not only pick up on that, but they’ll also get a subpar experience.

What does thinking of employees as assets instead of expenses mean?  It means investing in your employees.  Giving them responsibility and holding them accountable.  Listening to their ideas.  Training them and helping them grow.  Thinking of them as a key component of your business, not as a line item that can or should be minimized.

Certified Six Sigma (a business process that allows companies to improve their profitability) experts Kenneth Levine and Peter Sherman identified, in a July 26, 2010, Quality Digest article, “Ten Simple Principles for Treating Employees as Assets,” some very practical recommendations. All of them are free, and all of them are things you can implement immediately, including

• Tell your employees the truth, particularly in trying times
• Establish trust by making and keeping commitments
• Include employees in key decisions and planning
• Encourage employees to make suggestions for improvement

(To see the complete list, click here.)

Operating a productive, competitive, and successful organization or business depends on many factors beyond your control.  Your organizational culture--and your customer’s experience--isn’t one of them.