Why Should Companies Care About Their Employees?
Originally Published on Linked-In
Why Should Comapnies Care About Their Employees?
by Wayne J. Keeley, J.D., LL.M.
Ever since I began using a calculator in college, my math skills have gone to pot. That’s my disclosure so that if there is a mistake in the numbers, don’t blame me. The fact of the matter is that we spend a good deal of our waking hours at work. If we were to take an average work week of 39.2 hours per person and extrapolate that to 1842 hours worked per year (assuming 5 weeks of vacation) and then extrapolate that figure over the course of a fifty-year work life, it would equal approximately 92,120 hours. This means that more than a third of our waking hours are spent at work.
This brings to bear two important things: 1) you should LOVE what you do; and 2) you should work for a company that cares about you. Both of these axioms — or rather corollaries — are easier said than done. First, we rarely do what we love as a vocation — that is just the way life is, as often those things don’t bring in enough to put food on the table. So it becomes even more important that we find companies that truly care about their employees. Sir Richard Charles Nichols Branson, tycoon business magnate (worth about 5 billion according to Forbes) knows how important it is to take care of one’s employees. All one has to do is to Google Richard Branson and there will be hundreds of Hallmark-quality, publishable quotes about the importance of treating employees well — which includes caring about their health and family lives outside of the office in addition to their inside work life. After all, even CEOs are just people who have their own crosses to bear.
Add to that the fact that the pony express, telegraph, telex, and news reels are no longer extant and that we live in a world where news of every kind — The Good the Bad and the Ugly — is instantaneously transmitted to the masses via social media. And, voila!One black mark against a company by an employee (via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) can turn into a rapidly spreading cancer that could eventually bring down Goliath. All one needs is a keyboard and access to the Internet. As Pete Blackshaw’s cautionary tale demonstrates in its title alone: Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000, the same holds true, maybe even more so, with respect to dissatisfied and disgruntled employees who may have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the company. (Translation: they know where the bodies are buried.)
So here’s (and cheers) to People Magazine‘s 2017 list of 50 companies (is that all there are?) who care about their employees.
Check it out:
