“NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — One small business owner is putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to valuing his employees.
Dan Schneider, founder and CEO of SIB Development and Consulting in Charleston, S.C., is offering $50,000 bonuses to any of his full-time employees who stay with his company for five years…”
Full article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/smallbusiness/bonus/index.htm
What a story! Tell your employees that if they stay with your company for at least five years, you’ll give them a bonus of $50,000. That kind of cash might sound like good incentive to a lot of people. It might be enough to keep a lot of them employed with the company for at least that amount of time.
This article brought up a lot of different emotions in me. When I first read it, my strongest reaction was, ‘Oh my god, this is what I’ve done for a good part of my life.’ It wasn’t a conscious behavior but something that I did nonetheless.
I’ve realized in the last few years that I have a subconscious, reactive Firefighter part which believed that if I bought things for people, they would be my friend. I understand now that many of these ‘friends’ would stick around until I stopped paying for things. The people who were there for those reasons would be gone once the money stopped. When I became aware of this, I focused inside on the issue because I wanted to find out who those Firefighters were protecting.
This is what came up: When I was a little boy living in the hospital, my parents were only able to visit me once every four months or so because they lived so far away. On these occasions, they always brought me gifts. Because of this, I believe that there is a vulnerable part of me that is always looking for friendship. My Firefighter parts try to protect this young part from getting hurt or feeling alone by trying to buy friends.
In my opinion, it seems that the company in the above article is trying to do the same thing that my parts have done for me over the last 40 years. I know that this doesn’t work on a personal level – at least, it’s never worked for me.
I believe that if I want my employees to stay with my business long term, I have to show them respect and treat them as equals. This took me a while to realize when I was a business owner with over 30 employees. Once I stopped allowing money to be the key ingredient in the relationship and I began letting them know that their opinions mattered, employee turnover stopped almost completely.
To me, truly caring for people – not money – is the key to success in any long term relationship – business, personal or otherwise. This is something that has taken a lot of work. I’ve had to relax my parts, be more Self aware, and trust my gut feelings when reacting or making decisions. From a business point of view, I have found that doing so often guides me in the right direction.