To be perfectly blunt, almost all businesses give lip service to the idea that their staff is their most important resource. But when you look at the actual way that employees are regarded and examine the budgets and time devoted to staff development, the facts tell another story. For too many businesses, the people who work for the business are treated with little regard or respect. In many cases, while the Human Resource Department goes to great lengths to create an impression that the business values the employees, the corporate culture between management and staff is often one of contempt and disrespect.
This kind of corporate setting is tremendously unhealthy for the organization. To change your viewpoint of staff value so you esteem the people in your employ sometimes takes an effort. But psychologists tell us that people treat with respect people who treat them respectfully. So if you want your employees to be loyal to the company, respectful of their management and devoted to the cause of the business, give them your loyalty, respect and devotion and it will come back to you with interest.
They Are Your Hands and Feet
To get a better appreciation for the value of the staff that works for you, try for a few minutes to imagine what it would be like if they were not there for you. Now, hopefully your relationship with the people that work for you is cordial and friendly and they are not likely to walk out on you. But by trying to get your arms around what it would be like if they were not there to take care of so much of the work of your business, you will gain a new appreciation for what they do for you and your business on a daily basis.
The thing we do with the people who work for us is also a sin we commit with our family relationships too often. We take them for granted. When you assume your staff is happy and that you don?t need to be concerned with developing them, that is the time to worry because your failure to see staff development and morale as a major goal is a symptom you are taking them for granted which will eventually result in trouble.
The staff who works in your business are the hands, feet, heart and soul of the business. More customers and business contacts interact with the staff than with management. Most sales are made by your staff and almost all of the impressions people carry away from interactions with your business come from the staff. In this way, whether your employees value the company or see it in a negative light will be communicated either directly or nonverbally to your business associates, partners and customers. And that hurts your business long term.
Morale Matters
This is the reason that you really should be concerned about the morale of your staff. Morale is a tough thing to measure or even define. In general, morale reflects how your staff feels about their work and about working for the company both individually and corporately. An individual might have low morale due to health problems or personal problems. But when an entire staff develops poor morale, that can lead to a debilitating problem with your staff that should be addressed with as much management energy and focus as any other business problem you face.
There is a misconception about how to deal with morale which results in companies putting up more “hang in there” signs around the office and maybe offering a contest to help employees get excited about coming to work. These things are not bad in their own right but employee morale almost always comes from one thing - relationships. As a manager, if you want to find out what the morale of your staff is and you want to improve morale among our team, relationships are the way to do it and those relationships are with you.
Employees blossom in a setting where they are esteemed and that they know that management respects and values them. Even if the work is hard and things are going poorly in the marketplace for the company, if the employees feel you respect and value them and that they are on your team and you are on their side, they will rally to the company aid and do all they can to save the company from its problems. That is the power of strong morale in your employee community. And you can create that kind of corporate culture if you just get out of your office and get to know your staff and genuinely show them that you care about them.
Start Out Strong Then Make Them Stronger
If you have a software package that gets an upgrade to add functionality each year, you almost always pay for that upgrade so you can take an application that works well and make it better. So it makes sense to look at your staff in that same light. Each member of your team has specific skills and talents that make them valuable to your organization. You invested the time in recruiting strong people and in training them in their basic job description so they will fit in well in the job you need them to do.
It makes sense that just as you “upgrade” your software, you should create a program to routinely “upgrade” the people who are the hands and feet of your organization - your staff. Routine training and staff development programs will take an already outstanding team of workers and make them even more valuable to you. To overlook staff development and training in favor of other investments overlooks the greatest investment in your business that you can make.
Not only does improving your staff skills make them more versatile and productive to the business, it gives employees one of the core values any worker has for his or her place of employment. It shows them that they will continue to add skills and move up in the company as they work hard to succeed in their current jobs.
By training and developing the staff, you get the added benefit of a team that is more motivated to work hard and that feels valued and that they want to work for you for the long haul because you are willing to make an investment in them. The return on that investment is strong employee morale and employee loyalty and devotion. And that is worth the cost of employee development all by itself.
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