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FROM THE FOUNDER
T here’s been a real focus on people in our business – one that isn’t going away. We have all heard about the “great resignation” and how people can “quit in place.” When those things happen it costs us – as business owners – dearly. Productivity and quality decrease, morale gets worse, and it makes it harder to hire and keep good people. Four things you can do to build the kind of workplace over time that good people want to stay in. Making your firm a better place to work
Mark Zweig
So what can we really do about it? There is only so much we can afford to pay our people and only so many titles we can give out before everyone in the business is either a “vice president” or “senior (something).” Besides that, those things usually only have a very temporary effect. There are other, more important things we can do that not only don’t cost us as much, but that work better in terms of building the kind of workplace over time that good people want to work in. Here are my thoughts on four of those: 1. Show a genuine interest in your people and follow up. What I mean by this is that you and your managers need to talk to the people who work for you and actually listen to what they are telling you. That means you probe and ask more questions when you hear someone’s daughter
is sick or that their vacation house got broken into. And then you follow up a few days or weeks later to check back in on them to see what is happening. Put your phone down, look at the person you are speaking with, and listen to what they are telling you. If there is anything you or the company can do to help them, offer it. Show a real interest. 2. Provide less evaluation and instead give more help. We had a discussion recently at a company we work with where I am an advisor to their board of directors. They were discussing how they wanted their performance review process to be more positive. None of the managers enjoyed it, and they felt their employees didn’t either. I suggested that instead of rating and
See MARK ZWEIG , page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 17, 2022, ISSUE 1461
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