The Real Business Differentiators
Posted on July 30, 2013 by Brian Vogel, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
Great companies are differentiated by culture, employee engagement, & leadership ~ but how do these sometimes nebulous things manifest to begin with?
Countless blogs and articles have been written about the importance of culture, employee engagement, purpose, and the like. Most of these are well intended, but I think there are times they don’t dig deep enough. Sure great companies are differentiated by culture, employee engagement, and leadership ~ but how do these sometimes nebulous things manifest to begin with and positively change. Yes, HR and leadership are a huge influence, but when you peel back the onion what do you really have?
One might say, “Well gosh, isn’t it obvious? It’s employees silly.” The answer I would offer is partially correct. And I know this is going to sound strange from a “HR Guy”, but I think it is high time we lose the terminology “employee” from the business vernacular. Some companies adopt catchy terms like “associates” or “family members”, which I would agree definitely carry a different connotation than employee. But in a more general sense I would offer employees are ideally people with a shared purpose for belonging together. So call them what they are and treat them as such ~ people! How much different would the work environment feel for you and/or the people who work for you if you were referred to as just people versus employees?
I have a set of laws given to me 10 years ago called Horstman’s Laws that were developed and given to me by Mark Horstman at Manager-Tools. Hostman’s Law #1 says it well too…
It’s All About People
This is actually a hard-nosed, scientific and financial reality. Any hour you spend on people is a better investment than an hour spent on systems, processes, or policies. Great people can overcome average systems; average people won’t live up to great systems.
So what do you say we stop using the terminology “employee” and adopt something else. And when we are asked what is the difference for our business – let’s please be honest. Because when you’ve completely peeled back the onion, it is not employees that are the real business differentiators but it is the people and only the people.
