Does it Matter if You are a Selectable Employer?

In my last blog post, I discussed ending the annual employee performance review, as it does not properly discharge the stewardship responsibility of leaders. I introduced an alternative to the traditional annual performance review – a tool called Levels of Performance. This method promotes communication between employees and employers early and often, getting both parties on the same page as to whether the employee is selectable, incumbent or unacceptable.

Employees have an obligation to remain selectable to their organizations. What about employers? When it comes to stewardship – that is, our duty to care for the assets (employees) entrusted to us – does our responsibility end at benefits, two weeks holidays and a pay check? Maybe your answer is, “yes.” You may even view the employee/employer relationship as a weekly transaction: “Friday I pay you; Monday I expect just as much as I got out of you last week – plus a little more. By the way, what you did last week is history. You were paid for it; we are even.”

What does being a “selectable” employer really mean? You might ask, “Who really gets to choose their employer?” Consider this: as an employee, on the day I accepted my job offer, I chose to work for you. I considered the job, the culture and the industry. Every day that I continue working for the company, I am making that decision again. It’s like saying, “Today, knowing everything I know about the company and the job, I would still choose to work here again if I were back in the job market.” So who chooses their employer? The answer is simple: the best people get to choose their employers. Who would you rather have – the best people or those who feel they have no choice, who are “forced” to work for you for various reasons?

I was watching a documentary on physical health. At one point in the documentary they interviewed a group of women who worked in a call center in the U.S. As the camera scanned the cubicle farm, you could tell most of the staff members were obese. They interviewed a few of the employees who commented they usually work 45 to 60 hours each week. Overtime was mandatory, lunch and coffee breaks were difficult to take and holidays were rare. This led the women to develop poor habits such as storing junk food at their desks, not getting up from their desks, being too tired to exercise at the end of the day and eating vending machine food since it was the closest source of available food. The documentary interviewed them as they had started their own health and wellness committee, buying healthy snacks, exercising early each morning and starting a drive to help one women lose 80 lbs.

The story baffled me. If I were in charge of that workplace and part of the documentary, I would have been embarrassed. Why would the leader of that company allow his workplace to be used? Wasn’t he ashamed at his poor discharge of stewardship? Maybe he viewed the employees’ long hours and work ethic as positive.

If we want the best employees, we have a responsibility to protect, enhance and preserve the assets that are entrusted to us but are not necessarily ours. And our greatest assets are our people.

What if a call center opened up across the street from the one in the documentary and took their responsibility of stewardship more seriously? What if they offered a different work environment? If they took a more active role in their working conditions? Over time, who would end up with the best people? Who would become the selectable employer?

The workforce is changing. The best employees know they have a choice of where they work. As employers are we regularly examining our own selectability? Have we created a culture that attracts the best people? When we get the best people, do we take seriously our responsibility of protecting, enhancing and preserving the people entrusted to us?

I’ll leave you with one more question to consider: if I have my unfair share of the best people out there, how much do they impact my results? Ten percent? Twenty percent? More?

This article first appeared on Think Shift.

In each month’s Think to Speak article, veteran senior executive Chris Bachinski explores some of the challenges facing today’s leaders. His well-considered insights into corporate culture and management best practices are grounded in experience and a unique back-of-the-room leadership perspective.

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