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Shreveport, LA |
June 8 |
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Mobile,
AL |
June 10 |
Call Rebecca at 1-800-538-4595 for
any location. |
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“Any business owner that can’t
survive losing everything, won’t
survive anything.”
— Glenn Shepard
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Dear Glenn,
Living in Florida, I've
been through many hurricanes and understand
when employees must take care of their own homes and
families before reporting back to work.
Should I
be expecting my employees to come to work first
regardless of what they have going on at home during a
natural disaster?
Hurricane season starts in June.
Rebecca in Jacksonville
Dear
Rebecca,
No, certainly not. Part of being Fair is being
reasonable.
The problem is sometimes the perception of a lack of
consistency.
One of my clients near New Orleans was able to keep his
business running after Hurricane Katrina, but two of his
employees lost their homes. He gave them several weeks
off to regroup, but required that they call in each day
to keep him in the loop.
Another employee, whose house was unaffected,
whined that they got extra time off while she
didn't.
She claimed it was racial discrimination, and filed a
complaint with the EEOC.
While the case was dismissed and she was later fired for
unrelated reasons, it illustrates the importance of
understanding what it means to be consistent.
Treating employees consistently does not mean treating
everyone the same. It means treating everyone the same,
within the same set of circumstances.
Thanks for your question, and good luck with Hurricane
Season. If I don't see another drop of rain for 20
years, it'll be too soon.
Glenn in Waterlogged Nashville, TN
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Glenn's Personal Blog
Click on the gold
pen for the latest videos of the
Nashville flood |
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Like Dave Ramsey, I’m a huge
proponent of merit-based pay.
My employees never get raises.
Instead, they get a base salary
plus a year-end bonus tied to my company’s profitability for the
year, and their contribution to that profitability.
People often ask how these annual bonuses can continually increase if we have a year
when the company makes less than in the previous one, or
loses money altogether.
The answer is "THEY DON’T".
The assumption that everyone’s
income should increase every year – even when their company has
a downturn – is one reason GM went bankrupt.
But there are still opportunities
for individuals to increase their incomes even in recessionary
years, and even when catastrophic events affect a business.
Good merit based compensation
systems share cost savings with employees, and the opportunities
for this are unlimited.
After the Nashville flood hit my
business with 48 inches of water, 4 of our 5 phone lines
were out for two weeks. Rebecca called the phone company to get
for a credit for the time they were down, and discovered
something amazing.
Even though thousands of Nashville
homes and businesses were without service for weeks, no one had
asked for a credit. The CSR explained that the code they
used after Hurricane Katrina was NOLA (for New Orleans,
Louisiana), but he’d have to get one for Nashville. He spoke to
a supervisor, and they created a new code called NASH.
As soon as my mailroom manager heard about
this, she called to get a credit on her home phone, which was
down for three weeks. She received it immediately after she
gave the NASH code.
By taking the initiative to do
what over 30,000 other Tennesseans affected by the flood had
apparently not done, Rebecca saved my business $170 and increased her annual bonus by $85 (I split the
first year’s savings 50-50 on anything my employees do).
But this is not limited to small
amounts.
I know of a pharmaceutical company
in Missouri that pays its employees 10% of the first year
savings on anything they do to cuts costs. When the company was about to
spend $20 million on constructing a new building, two employees
came up with the alternative of buying a nearby school that had
been abandoned, and converting it to office space.
The
company did exactly that, saving itself $3 million, and the
two
employees split a $300,000 bonus.
All of which proves what I’ve been
saying for years:
Regardless of whether times are
good or bad, anyone who’s willing to take initiative can create
their own job security – and often increase their income – by
finding ways to boost the bottom line.
To Your Success,
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