When I started up my tech company in the UK in 1983, I wanted a company that served both clients and staff with kindness, honesty and authenticity, a bit of fun, and lots of learning. I set about hiring employees that would support those values. They became the glue that held us all together.

My first job was to serve my employees so they could then serve our clients. After all, these folks would be the touch point between the people who would buy my product and the company. My employees were my first customers.

EMPLOYEE CARE

To ensure employees remained creative, loyal, and engaged, especially those in the field and who I didn’t regularly see, I called each of the 48 techies monthly to check in and held monthly meetups at a pub (Darts was my Waterloo. I think one needs to be British to win.); weekly, I sat down with the 8 managers, the receptionist (who knew EVERYTHING) and my secretary (ditto) to catch up. And my door was always open.

To keep managers inspired, I gave them an all-expense paid week off a year (besides their annual holiday) to take any course of their choosing (not work-specific). And when I noticed them lagging from working too many intense hours (it was hard to get them to take vacations!) I sent them home for a few days for some ‘mental health’ time after calling their wives (in those days in the UK, men worked, women did childcare) to keep them ‘in bed’ for a while. I even sent meals from a local restaurant. I took care of them with the same thoughtfulness and care I did my clients.

We did well. In just under 4 years, we had a $5,000,000 gross income – with no computers, no web, no email, no urls, no online anything. Just me, a phone, in-person meetings, and my wonderful team who kept clients happy and called me when they heard of a lead within the client’s workplace.

I’m certain our success came from my team: much of our growth came from happy clients giving us repeat business and referrals. We doubled our business every year. That was 40 years ago, and the company is still in business.

In the 5 years I ran the company only one person left, due to a cross-country move. I learned afterwards that most of my folks had been approached by competitors and offered double the salary, but they wouldn’t leave due to the respect and hands-on care I gave them. Plus, they found it great fun to watch me attempt to play darts every month.

HAS IT CHANGED TOO MUCH?

It seems to be different now. Money seems to be an overriding criterion and people don’t seem to matter.

A client recently told me of a colleague – a long-standing sales team member and good producer – who quit due to the disrespect she felt from her manager and COO.

I asked if she’d explained her reasons at her exit interview so the company could fix their internal issues and stop others from quitting also. Seems she was just asked to complete a survey and was not given an exit interview. And, according to my client, he and several team members are looking for jobs due to the disrespect rampant in the company.

Seems the company has no criteria around improvement, obviously committed to maintaining the status quo.

Have times changed and people have become a commodity? Currently only 50% of companies offer an exit interview, while 75% offer a survey. That leads me to wonder how many companies don’t achieve their potential due to unhappy employees or disrespectful management. I can’t understand why they’d prefer to go through the time and expense to rehire and train new employees than fix the problems that caused them.

EXIT INTERVIEWS

Obviously, exit interviews that ask hard questions (“Is there something we’re doing as a company that should be improved? That, if fixed, would have enabled you to stay?”) would offer meaningful insights that could illuminate underlying problems in the culture, employee satisfaction, and the employee lifecycle. But that’s not happening as often as it should.

I’d like to offer a few Facilitative Questions™ to help companies currently not offering exit interviews reconsider their employee practices in hopes they’ll be more aware of their responsibility around serving employees well. After all, they’ve spent time and money hiring and training folks to represent them. Might as well keep them and simultaneously run a respectful company.

• What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add respect, communication and servant leadership to the skills necessary for management – and include these values in hiring practices?
• How will you know if your managers have the skills to enable employees to thrive, be creative, and feel good about working for you? And how do you ensure they’re supervised around these skills?
• What practices must you put in place to

o  Have continual checks on management skills to ensure employee happiness?

o  Offer management training programs to ensure respect, collaboration, communication, and kindness are part of their daily practice?

o  Put required exit interviews in place led by HR professionals?

o  Develop hiring practices that sort for managers who put employee respect and growth as necessary skills?

• What supervision practices must you maintain to ensure management provides respect, acceptance, and communication with all employees?

I would like to think that employees aren’t considered a commodity, or that companies aren’t above self-examination or willingness to improve. Do your company a favor: make employee retention, satisfaction, respect, and creativity part of your company identity. And commit to doing exit interviews to discover your weaknesses so you can improve your bottom line.

_________________________    

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.