Asset or Liability? The power of employee potential!

At the helm or out to sea??... How companies value and utilise their employees..

We have all heard the horror stories, the angry elves complaining about the boss and the company, which are the lead weight on their very souls! We cannot say all complaining is whining but when one complains incessantly, we often think of the quote from William Arthur Ward when he said, "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." So we tend to discount the content of the complaint by the employee and move on with a lower opinion of the employee in reality and maybe an undiscovered source of discontent.

It’s all well and dandy if there is no substance to the complaint or a real will to get the best out of one’s team members. However, as leaders, we are obliged to achieve performance levels with our team(s), which is no easy feat if the winds of discontent and subsequent disengagement sweep silently through our team(s). Not only should we address such issues in private with our team members, we should be mindful for such discontent in our teams through close relationship ties with our people whom often offer up information on such issues that we might not otherwise have known about.

When thinking about our team issues, we should widen our thought process and honestly self reflect; thinking about our leadership impact, corporate leadership styles and guidelines (formal/informal), the department workloads and process requirements, company culture and most importantly, how all this merges with how employees are perceived by the company… are they treated as an asset or a liability?

Business case studies.co.uk have a posted article that suggests employees consider their leaders/manager to have a style that is not engaging. A survey analysis concluded that 21% of managers are perceived as autocratic by their employees, 16% are bureaucratic, 7% are innovative, 9% are trusting, and 7% are empowering. These numbers in my opinion contextualise the low level of leadership efficacy out there in the marketplace in terms of employee engagement, which brings us back to the kernel question, does our company value employees as an asset or a liability?

To answer this question, we must think of what role the employee is in the organisation. Is it a value creator role or a fulfilment role? This is a start in assessing what kind of organisation we are leading in and if it’s the right one for us. Referring to my prior article on company culture, we should not underestimate it in determining our leadership efficacy and how we can adjust to increase it whilst retaining our ‘core inner selves’. Bearing the above in mind, we should then ask the following questions:

• ü  What kind of company culture does our organisation have, does it support our leadership style and how does it treat employees (value creator or fulfilment role)?
• ü  Does the company have a prescribed leadership style? If so, are all leaders above and below us practising it or has a sub culture(s) evolved where different leadership styles prevail altering the company culture and operating environment?
• ü  What kind of prevailing practises are affecting one’s leadership ability and are they predominantly positive or negative? Can they be adjusted to allow one room to operate more effectively in engaging with one’s team(s)?
• ü  What actual company culture exists, leadership practice predominates and business practice runs our life as a leader? Is it consistent and does it help engage or disengage our team members with the organisation and with us as their leader?
• ü  What kind of improvements in employee engagement could one make if we altered our approach? Would we compromise core values to be “more effective”?

When thinking about this, one arrives at a picture that defines the organisation and contextualises the value proposition the organisation places on its employees.

In general, one should note that companies, whom are more autocratic by nature and hierarchical in structure, tend to value employees in terms of “doers” and “fulfillers” of roles.  This ‘command and control’ structure leaves little room for two-way communication and other leadership attributes that engages and empowers employees. Successful leaders in such companies inadvertently devalue employees whom are not peers, superiors or revenue generating in sales seeing them as “cost centers” especially at budget time. This “liability” view of employees empowers the few and dis empowers the many especially in large organisation’s where the cumulative effect of employee potential is material when one considers the disengagement of employees from companies whom by design tend to devalue their perceived inputs to that of prescribed service providers.  

Companies with strong hierarchical structures don’t have to be like that. With a little focus and allot of commitment from the top down on cultural and leadership change, autocratic leadership can be augmented with more consultative leadership traits such as mentorship, approachability and controlled two way communication where the rules of upwards communication are seamlessly sewn into a changing company culture and a leadership change management plan. One could with the right plan, support and commitment tap into the unexplored employee potential that is within one’s walls reaping untold rewards for successfully engaging a wider segment of employees whom feed into the operations strategy and direction of the company.

Companies whom value their employees as “assets” by design tend to have thought long and hard about areas like company culture, leadership and business practice as their business is very dependant on engaged and empowered employees thinking like owners in their daily work lives adding value in service quality, new ideas and commitment to the companies vision, work practices and inherent company culture solidifying the company’s sustainable future. The rewards at times can be hard to quantify but are evident in many successful companies in the technology, social media and aviation industries.

Determining a position on what role the employee takes in one’s company is a chance to build something great in a company whom becomes great by the people within its walls each and every day working to a common goal that can be as sustainable as the company wishes it to be. I return to Lao Tzu’s quote where “a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step”. If everybody takes that first step together, a new journey of creation begins arriving at great stations of success along a long and sustainable path a company can proudly call its history.