Employment: A Prison or a Partnership?

Business owners that I work with regularly comment…

“Ten or twenty years ago, the bad news was I felt like I had a target on my back. The good news was most days that target felt like it was about the size of an apple. Today, between the constantly changing employment laws and my employees, most days I feel like that target is the size of a large watermelon. What should I do? Maybe I should just sell the place!”

It is easy to understand the sentiment. Consider the following items:

• For the 2006 calendar year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was involved in over 85,000 charges from individuals across the country. Those charges resulted in payments via enforcement action or litigation of over $110 million dollars.
• During the summer of 2005 a group of the most powerful labor unions broke away from the AFL-CIO and formed a coalition, “Change to Win.” The coalition is building a war chest in excess of 2 billion dollars with the express purpose of increasing the percentage of American workers who are organized. The group is committed to devoting 75% of its resources for one purpose – organizing unions across the country. And finally, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that could potentially provide leverage to employees at even the smallest businesses.

In such a climate, employment is going to be a partnership or a prison. Frankly, there is little middle ground. While it sounds overly simplistic, I regularly ask colleagues and business owners to give me an example of the “middle ground”. Guess what? I’m still waiting.

Partnerships Will Set You Free
Creating a partnership with employees is the answer to many of the challenges employers face today. People who are reasonably passionate, clear about what they are trying to accomplish, encouraged to take reasonable risk, recognized when they succeed, and held accountable in an appropriate manner when their efforts are unsuccessful, succeed more often than they fail. Don’t take my word for it. Wasn’t that the message twenty years ago of “In Search of Excellence”? What about the writings of Ken Blanchard, or the recent writings of Jim Collins (“Built to Last” and “Good to Great”)?

Creating a partnership with employees, including those who are blue-collar, semi-skilled, or marginally educated, is possible. In my experience, most employees do not want to be the boss. They simply want the boss to recognize they are not an inanimate object.

Unfortunately, creating partnerships with employees is the management equivalent to the notion of service for many companies. What business would actually come out and say, “Our service stinks?” Virtually every business touts its “commitment to excellent service.” Yet, each of our common experience suggests that the ”commitment” is actually a commitment to getting the words “excellent service” on the marketing literature, which is fairly easy to do given a decent copy editor. Bluntly, most organizations simply are not willing to exert the effort required to consistently provide great service. It requires focus and passion. It means little down time from 8 – 6 (and beyond). It means accountability for errors instead of excuses. And in some instances, it means an employee will not remain.

Creating employee partnerships is similar. It begins in the application stage and touches every single aspect of the organization, every policy, every department, and every manager. The application looks different, expectations are phrased differently, and disciplinary action looks different. But before jumping to conclusions, I am not advocating some grown-up baby-sitting service. To the contrary, I am advocating a philosophy that is clearly focused on both parties succeeding.

Sometimes succeeding means an employee gets let go because this is not where he or she will apparently be most successful. Sometimes succeeding means the longest tenured employee does not get promoted, yet he or she understands because the expectations about the organization’s goals were clear from his or her initial interview.

Success today for both business owners and employees is absolutely possible and it need not involve the threat of litigation or 3rd party representation. It does require talented people working together in some very specific ways. For both those in leadership and those led, employment should be a partnership and not a prison. Your company employs plenty of talented people. You get to choose whether those talented employees work like your partners or wards in your prison.

Which do you think will work more productively to achieve your organization’s goals?