The Big Picture - August 2013 - (Page 16)

business ++ management business management Protecting Your Most Valuable Assets By Marty McGhie O ne of my college professors once told our accounting class that every company has some very valuable assets that will never show up on the balance sheet. “Could anyone venture a guess as to what these might be?” he asked. After a few errant answers and many furrowed brows on our part, the professor revealed the assets he was referring to: the company’s employees. “Even though they have zero net value on the books,” he said, “in actuality its employees are the most valuable assets a company can have.” Now, jump ahead to the present day. We have oﬃcially been “post-recession” for a couple of years, and it’s safe to say that employees are much more willing to take chances on ﬁnding better employment if they aren’t satisﬁed with their current job. I’m guessing that many of you have felt the pain of losing a great employee – but have been caught oﬀ-guard by the loss because you thought they were perfectly happy working for you. So in an eﬀort to avoid that pain, let’s discuss how you can make your employees happy in your workplace and ultimately hang on to the best ones. First, though, consider what’s most important to your employees. In the recent Society of Human Resources Management’s annual survey (shrm.org), respondents indicated several factors that were most important in creating the highest job satisfaction. In order of importance, they reported these to be: opportunities to use skills and abilities; job security; compensation; communication between employees and senior management; and relationship with immediate supervisor. MARTY MCGHIE is VP ﬁnance/operations of Ferrari Color, a digital-imaging center with Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Sacramento locations. He is a partner and director of Signs.com and the author of Business + Management for Digital Print Providers + Sign Shops (ST Media Books, stmediabooks.com). marty@ferraricolor.com 16 THE BIG PICTURE AUGUST 2013 What’s important to take away from this survey is that if you wish to create a workplace where people want to stay and perhaps build their career, you do have to pay them appropriately – but there’s more to creating a positive work environment and retaining your best staﬀ than just their salaries. Rewarding the best and the brightest We all know compensation is extremely important to retaining your top employees. Suﬃce to say, you need to make sure your employees feel like you’re being fair to them. Avoid giving out “cost-of-living” raises to all your employees as a blanket approach to compensation. This is a cop out and it does nothing to boost employee morale – in fact, it does just the opposite. Instead, your best employees should get the best raises and the highest compensation. Yes, it might take a few years for employees to work their way up to the top of the ladder on comparable compensation, but this should be your goal. Have open communication with your employees about their wages or salaries. Ask them if they believe you’re being fair. If your company has had a rough year ﬁnancially and cash ﬂow is tight, you might let your employees know this will aﬀect their raises. But, similarly, when business is great and cash is ﬂowing into the business, don’t be greedy. Take that opportunity to reward your employees with wage and salary increases, particularly to your stars (and stars on the rise). Open communication and fair treatment will always go a long way to making your employees feel like they’re being fairly paid. Recognizing work above and beyond One of the most rewarding parts of an employee’s job is when he or she is recognized for doing a good job. Now this might seem kind of silly. Shouldn’t everyone be doing a good job? Yes, of course. But deeply rooted in our human nature is the desire to be recognized and appreciated when you do something well. The nice thing about running a business is there are a lot of chances to recognize the value that individual employees provide to the company. For instance, this >38 http://www.shrm.org http://www.Signs.com http://www.stmediabooks.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Big Picture - August 2013

The Big Picture - August 2013
Contents
InSight
Wide Angle
UpFront
Business + Management
Wall-to-Wall: Spoonflower
Display Systems: Your Perfect Match
The Print World Comes to Chicago
R+D
Job Log

The Big Picture - August 2013