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.

3 Benefits of Creating An Alumni

If you're like most companies, when a member of your staff gives their two-week notice, you prepare the exit paperwork and say goodbye. However, a few companies have discovered the value in treating their exiting staff as alumni.

An alumnus (a former member of a group, company or organization) can be a great resource to your company. Here are three types of alumni that can benefit your company.

The boomerang

Not all staff members who leave are gone for good. Former employees may leave to receive more education, others may move on to a job where they can gain new and additional experience, and still others may leave because they think they may like a different company or position better. Whatever the reason, if they like your company while they are working for you, they may want to come back. In returning, they bring experience from working at your company before and a stronger knowledge base by gaining more education or working in other positions.

The way you handle the exit experience for your employees can make a big impact on the chances of hiring former employees back on again some day. Be sure to let your exiting employee know they are welcome back if they would ever like to return.

The referrer

A lot of times, employees leave not because they are unhappy, but because they want to continue to grow through education or new experiences. These employees who leave with a positive opinion of the company can be great at referring potential new hires. After all, they know why your company is great and they can encourage friends and family who would be a good fit for the position to apply.

Not only can former employees refer potential new hires, they can also encourage potential patients to use your services. Because they know firsthand how the company operates, former employees can tell potential customers all the benefits your company has to offer. To keep former employees up to date on your current achievements, ask exiting staff if they would like to receive a special alumni newsletter that shares milestones the company hits. 

The sounding board

If you're looking for people familiar with your company to give their honest feedback about your brand and customer experience, your former employees may be a good group to talk to. Since they are no longer receiving paychecks, they're more likely to provide objective feedback than employees.

Becoming An Innovative, Creative, Adaptive Leader

Vulnerability. That's what it takes to become truly innovative, creative and adaptive, says the leading national expert on vulnerability, Brené Brown.

Now if you're like most professionals, you probably feel that vulnerability doesn't belong in the workplace. After all, vulnerability, as defined by Dictionary.com is: (1) capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon; (2) open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.; (3) (of a place) open to assault; difficult to defend.

A misunderstood definition

Based off of the definition, you might wonder why you would ever want to be vulnerable. Brown, however, clarifies in her discussion on Chase Jarvis LIVE that vulnerability is a misunderstood concept. Instead, Brown defines it based off the data she's gathered as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. She goes on to say, "How can you be a good leader who's not willing to walk into uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure."

Still, the idea of being vulnerable and authentic in the workplace has been questioned by many. Herminia Ibarra, author of, "The Authentic Paradox," in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) referenced an example of Cynthia Danaher, a newly appointed general manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. who hurt her credibility as a leader by being honest about how she felt.

Danaher recalled to the Wall Street Journal that she confided to her 5,300 employees shortly after filling her new role, "I want to do this job, but it's scary and I need your help." She went on to say that the company finally had a boss who "knows how to make coffee."

Ibarra, in her HBR review article said, "Being utterly transparent—disclosing every single thought and feeling—is both unrealistic and risky."

Brown further explained to Jarvis that vulnerability doesn't have to lead to loss of credibility and injury. "What I hear people say is, 'Yes, you can be vulnerable at work but not too vulnerable.' That's like saying you can be healthy but not too healthy—you can't really be too healthy. When people say too vulnerable, what they mean is there's boundary issues."

She then used an example of a business partner who in front of venture capitalists and employees cries, 'Um, I'm in over my head. I'm not sure what's happening, and I'm pretty sure it's all going to go to [omit] in the next two weeks.'

Sharing in this way isn't appropriate, Brown said. You'd be misunderstanding your role. However, sharing that information with a therapist or possibly their partner wouldn't be inappropriate. "Vulnerability," Brown said, "requires an understanding of boundaries: where we share, with whom we share, and why we're sharing."

Boundaries and emotional intelligence

To be vulnerable, you must cultivate personal boundaries in your life. A boundary is a limit we set to help us define what is acceptable behavior from others in order to keep ourselves safe emotionally, physically and psychologically. The boundaries we set regulate how people treat us and how we treat others.

Setting personal boundaries is part of being emotionally intelligent. This learned skill of emotional intelligence helps you identify how you are feeling, how others are feeling, and how what you say and do affects others.

When Danaher told her employees that she was good at making coffee but needed help being able to fulfill her new role as general manager, she did not understand how her message would affect her employees emotionally. She had anticipated that by sharing this information, her employees would relate to a time when they started something new and felt uncertain. She assumed that by sharing this information, they would feel a bond with her because they would be able to relate. Instead, her employees felt a sense of insecurity because they were looking for someone who may not know everything but had a plan and vision for what they were working toward.

Fortunately, as previously mentioned, emotional intelligence is a learned skill, which means if you feel you're lacking, you can practice and improve.

While Danaher admits her faux pas is a painful memory, she has continued to learn from her mistake and has become a more resilient leader because of it. "A balance of openness, strength, and the ability to read others and their capacity for emotional content are all important aspects of vulnerability in leadership," Robert Beare Jr. stated in his doctoral dissertation at Capella University. He then paraphrased authors Goffee and Jones by saying, "In order to inspire followers to innovative and effective teamwork, leaders must develop the ability to be vulnerable and selectively show imperfection."

Becoming a vulnerable, innovative, creative, adaptive leader

Since we're all individual, becoming our true selves will look different for each of us. However, here are six things you can do to become more authentic:

1. Recognize yourself as a person who is always growing and evolving. 
2. Spend time introspectively searching who you are. 
3. Ask others (those who are fans of you as well as those who are not) what they think of your current leadership style. 
4. Work on your emotional intelligence and boundary setting. 
5. Practice talking to others. 
6. And follow Brown's advice to strive for excellence instead of perfection. Try something new, knowing it won't be perfect but that it doesn't need to be.

"Authenticity," Ibarra said, "is being aware of who you are at the core (personality, abilities, motivations, thinking/beliefs), and leading from that place."

Becoming the kind of leader that is authentic and vulnerable doesn't happen overnight. It comes as you conscientiously work toward it.