What Makes a Business a Good Employer?
A good employer is created by the decisions its leaders make when commercial pressure and responsibility to employees pull in different directions.
Salary and benefits matter, but the daily experience of working for an organisation is also shaped by whether managers communicate clearly and whether difficult issues are handled fairly.
Senior leaders cannot control every interaction within a business. They do, however, determine what the organisation rewards and what it is prepared to tolerate. Employees learn far more from those signals than they do from a set of values displayed on a wall.
During more than two decades in senior leadership roles within global IT and telecommunications organisations, I saw how quickly the employee experience could change as a business developed.
Growth brought new opportunities for employees, while organisational change created uncertainty about what would happen next. Decisions made for sound commercial reasons could still cause frustration when people did not understand the thinking behind them.
Leaders will not always be able to give employees the outcome they want. They should be able to explain what has been decided and acknowledge the effect it will have.
Clarity is one of the clearest signs of a responsible employer.
People can work through demanding periods when they understand what is expected of them and believe that decisions are being made with reasonable care. Uncertainty becomes harder to manage when messages change depending on who delivers them.
This places considerable responsibility on managers.
An executive team may have a clear intention, yet employees experience the organisation largely through their immediate manager. If that manager has not been given enough information or authority, even a sensible leadership decision can be communicated badly.
Management capability therefore deserves the same level of attention as strategy. Promoting a technically capable employee does not automatically prepare them to manage another person’s performance or respond to a sensitive concern.
Managers need opportunities to develop their judgement. They also need senior leaders who will support reasonable decisions instead of taking control whenever a situation becomes uncomfortable.
Consistency matters as well.
This allows for judgement and individual circumstances. Employees should still be able to understand how a conclusion was reached and trust that comparable situations will receive comparable consideration.
Inconsistent leadership creates hesitation. People spend time trying to predict which version of a rule will apply or who needs to be approached to obtain an answer. That uncertainty eventually affects performance as well as confidence in the organisation.
A good employer is also willing to address problems before they become accepted behaviour.
Every organisation experiences disagreement and occasional management mistakes. The response tells employees whether the stated standards carry any weight. When a concern is raised, people notice whether it is considered seriously and whether anything changes as a result.
Leaders may find these issues harder to see as an organisation expands. Information is filtered before it reaches the executive team, particularly when managers believe that senior leaders only want to hear positive news.
Creating room for constructive challenge is therefore an important leadership responsibility. Employees need appropriate ways to raise concerns, while senior leaders need the discipline to hear information that may question their assumptions.
For a C-suite reader, one question may be particularly useful:
If employees were asked what happens when someone raises a difficult issue in your organisation, how consistent would their answers be?
The response would reveal a great deal about management confidence and the level of trust employees place in the organisation.
Employer reputation is built over time. It develops through decisions about workload and through the conversations managers have when someone is struggling. It is reinforced when leaders apply the standards they expect from other people to their own conduct.
The strongest employers will not get every decision right. They will be prepared to examine the effects of those decisions and make changes when the evidence justifies them.
Armour Coaching is proud to sponsor the Employer of the Year category at TheBusinessDesk.com’s West Midlands Business of the Year Awards.
The award provides an opportunity to recognise businesses that are creating positive working environments while meeting the commercial demands placed upon them.
I am looking forward to learning more about the organisations being recognised and the leadership choices behind their achievements.
To learn more about Armour Coaching’s work with leaders and organisations, visit:
Comments