Employees—Assets or Expenses?

Expense. A cost or charge.
Asset. A useful or valuable item/person that one owns.

If you have not already, you need to stop and examine how you perceive the employees at your company. The way you see your employees affects your employee engagement.

Expenses

What do you do with expenses in your company? You look for ways to reduce them. When you consider your employees an expense, which they are of course, you strive to have the least amount of employees needed to do the greatest amount of work possible. It may sound a little heartless to consider an employee an expense but when it comes down to it, technically, they are.

As a common rule, a healthy company should spend less than a third of its gross income to pay its employees. This is why, if a company doesn't bring in as much income as it was hoping, it typically has layoffs. With layoffs come lower morale, talent loss, and lost productivity. While layoffs aren't the only way to deal with a overextended budget, frequently that is what's used.

Assets

The skills and intellectual abilities your employees possess is something you cannot own. Additionally, since these items are intangible, you cannot assign an exact value to them. For these reasons, employees are not true assets.

However intangible, your employees still possess value. Through their ingenuity, they can solve problems, increase efficiency and skyrocket sales. Additionally, the longer an employee is with your company, the more company knowledge they possess. As they complete tasks and overcome problems, they strengthen and hone their skills. So, if you consider an asset something or someone that appreciates over time, then an employee is definitely an asset.

Treating employees as assets

Treating employees as assets can pay dividends to you in the future and need not incur expense. Here are some ways you can show your employees that you value them as assets to your company.

• Take time to get to know your employees and their teams
• Reward the sharing of company knowledge
• Increase your communication
• Provide added reassurance during times of change and transition
• Encourage feedback from all levels of your company on how you can improve your service
• Listen to the feedback you receive
• Make commitments and keep them
• Invite everyone to increase their quality of work
• Support the initiatives your employees are working on
• Improve your training programs
• Teach your managers how to provide feedforward
• Encourage creativity

What do you think?

Are employees expenses or assets? How has treating them one way or the other affected your company? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Invest in Your Employees

Part 1 of 7: Invest in your employees

7 Ways to Improve Patient Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is directly related to customer satisfaction. When your employees are happy at work, your customers can tell. Here are a few tips for improving employee morale:

Recognizing a job well done

When was the last time you let your employees know they were doing a great job? According to Forbes, "Recognition is most effective when it's given in the context of a larger [business-related] goal." You can provide recognition for things your employees are doing to help further company goals.

We can help you identify which employees are making a difference through our interview process. When customers mention employees who have performed outstanding work, we make sure you know about it. When a customer mentions an employee, we include that in the Customer Satisfaction Interview so you can see it.

You can easily print employee recognition certificates on My.Pinnacle. Visit the My.Pinnacle dashboard and click on Resources. To generate a customized certificate, just fill out the simple form with your organization's name, the employee's name, and your name. Then press print.

Ask for employee feedback

In addition to gathering customer feedback, surveying your employees can also help you invest in them. Gathering feedback and following up on it shows your employee that you care about them and value their experience. Open-ended questions can help you understand where your employees are succeeding and struggling. You can provide better care for your patients by knowing your employees. You can also find out which employees your staff feels are rock stars. Which, by the way, is another great way to find employees to recognize.

For more ways to improve patient satisfaction, visit part 2: Make Lemonade from Lemons.