Business For The Business Not The People

In school, they teach you to succeed in business you have to create customers. One of the best ways to create customers is develop them from your employees. Employees that buy back from the business are buying into the business. This employee pride is considered one of your best forms of marketing. It is free advertising for any business.

The consequences of trust

To the business, for the business, in the business we trust until the business falters. By March of this year, there may be as many as 400,000 employees experiencing layoff. The price these people will pay for buying into the businesses they worked for is their livelihood. Loss of income, health benefits and self worth are accompanied by feeling of betrayal. I know this feeling first hand, as I worked for a company that in effect begged its employees to believe them as they led the lambs to slaughter.

The truth of loyalty

I have been on both sides of the management employee line and sadly only a few times can I say I experienced true loyalty given back to the employee during times of crisis. This loyalty never came from the top but from the middle managers whose job was to preach the company line to the people they worked with side by side. Another prevailing fact is times change and upper management does not adjust to the changes until it is too late. The first person asked to give extra and tighten their belt is the person who really is the company’s bottom line, the employee. I am talking about those people who either produce or are responsible for the quality of the product sales. The people who are the first to be asked to sacrifice and usually the first to be sacrificed.

A reality of business

If the bottom line is “that’s business,” then how can businesses expect loyalty? Trust is a two way street. If you buy into the business you work for, then you should expect the business to do so in return. Somehow when a business passes the small business phase, the company mentality changes. The employee is no longer a person but a cog in the wheel. They are allowed to work until they are broken and then replaced. It is with this knowledge that many people work in fear with day in and day out. It is mentality that turns friend against friend. It is a mentality that induces more stress upon the employee pool everyday.

Witnessing the pain of reality

The actuality is as Hershey’s, Chrysler and other companies seek to solve their problems at the cost of people’s jobs, loyalty becomes an abstract term related more to fear than pride. I know this because I went through a long drawn out process of a company, Grand Union killing itself. I spent many a night in the final days trying to comfort fellow workers trying to cope with the aspect of a lost future. I do not know which is more disturbing trying to give solace to a six foot four bear of a man or four foot nine single mother of three each reduced to tears fearing for their family. Many weeks, I watched as the happiest and strongest of people cave in. Some in private and some very publicly. All of whom I am proud to have known, they were the best of the best. I will always carry the heartbreak of their tears with me. The people who wear those high priced suits should have that experience. It is one, I will never forget.

Give not, ask not

When business detaches it self from the people who make it a business, it is called good business acumen. I call it false pretenses. The fact is businesses will fail. Most failures begin when the business thinks about what is best for itself and not for both the business and the people who work for it. We are in the beginning of the 21st century, it is a time for change. It is time for the businesses top level to stop making the bottom level pay for their mistakes. As GM, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Hershey’s move forward to sustain themselves many people who were asked to believe in them will be left like debris in the wake of a hurricane. It is time to make big business show the worker they believe in them. It is like the adage about “if you want respect, you have to show respect.” If you want me to believe in you, you have to show you believe in me.