A Question of Care
Something that has stuck with me since I first heard it at a Darden Business School residential programme is by Alec Horniman who said that staff have three questions of every manager:
Can I trust you?
Do you care about me?
Are you committed to excellence?
I could talk for hours (okay I do) about each of these things, but I want to focus here on caring.
The caring question is simply “do you recognise me as a human being?” or “am I just an economic unit, a vehicle of production?” Hopefully, most of us would think of ourselves as managers who care about our staff as people. We can probably all think of times we’ve demonstrated that by showing compassion and appreciation when our staff experienced tough times..
But how do you go beyond that? How do you create a culture where people feel cared about all the time? Because if you only show compassion and appreciation in times of distress, there’s a risk that in normal times you will be perceived as indifferent, and right now more than ever people need security and reassurance.
Simon Penn, a long-standing client of ours, reminded me of a long-lost practice from years ago. When he was an apprentice, the boss would come around each week with the pay packet. It was literally an envelope with a payslip recording your hours and a cheque attached. The boss would hand it over with a word of thanks. Simon remembers feeling a little boost from the ritual, a moment of feeling acknowledged and appreciated.
He asks a great question – “What’s the equivalent of that today?”
One of my favourite sayings is “In a high-tech world, high touch is everything”. I often apply it to marketing and the customer experience, but it also applies to the employee journey. Obviously, the technology that has replaced so many of our transactions is way more efficient, however we have lost a lot of the human touchpoints which allowed us to connect as people.
What can you do so that people in your team regularly get the equivalent of your personal “Thanks for your effort this week”? A vintage pay packet might not be the answer, but it’s a great challenge to think about how you can create some time in your work week to show you care in a personal and personalised way.
But for heaven’s sake don’t automate it.