MEHMET AKSEL
Last week I was chatting with a friend of mine.
He has taken over a ‘well-established’ business that has been around for years and will revamp it completely and re-launch it with a completely different concept. He is about to launch it.
“Well, Memo,” he said, “the first week I took over the hotel, I went into the kitchen, I was sick to my stomach; I went inside the staff dormitory, and it was a windowless, airless and all-round squalid place (a place where you couldn’t even keep a dog on a leash, as the Turkish saying goes). And now come and see what kind of an environment the staff will work and live in – not much different than that of the guests.”
(A place where you couldn’t even keep a dog on a leash is an old saying, and I beg you to just set animal rights aside for a minute and take it only as a simple saying.)
This is actually the diagnosis and treatment of our pathetic state by a perfectionist.
Those who have read my article from last week will remember that I mentioned that in order for a business to be successful, there should be either a perfectionist owner or a proper set of rules and a genuinely functioning control mechanism.
Seek and you shall not find… Yet, what I want to talk about here is completely different.
Since I was a kid, I have been unable to comprehend how some people treat their employees as ‘lower class people’.
The man treats his employees like slaves, considers a small pay raise as preposterous, and then distributes extravagant tips to everyone wherever he goes.
On paper, he is the country’s top philanthropist; but he is of no use to anyone around him, to anyone who works for him, anyone who provides him comfort, makes his life easier for him and enables him to live this beautiful life.
Since I was a kid, I have been unable to fathom this sort of greed and apathy.
A person should first take care of the needs of the people who are close to him and that benefit him, so that these people will take care of him.
One should first make their own employees happy so that these employees can keep the business alive and make it grow.
For instance, the most important problem in the food and beverage industry, which I am part of, is personnel.
They are both difficult to find and hard to retain.
I’ve never been able to make sense of this personnel-poaching thing either.
If your personnel is going to make a jump in their career, be proud of it, encourage it, even assist it, be a lead, but on the other hand, why would a happy employee leave you or the job they love?
The foremost cause for resignations is not being valued by one’s employer.
I took it upon myself to search for it on the Internet.
A comprehensive study conducted by Stanford University in 2021 showed that the leading reason for resignations, especially during the pandemic period, is the attitude of employers towards their employees.
Alison Omens, Chief strategist at JUST Capital, who collected the data for the research, told the BBC: “Our data shows that the most important thing for employees in recent years is their company’s attitude towards employees. This includes different metrics such as wages, benefits, job security, opportunities, security and equality.”
Here is another one…
In a recent global survey conducted by McKinsey, 40 percent of employees said they were considering changing jobs in the next three to six months. They defined the most important reason behind resignations as ‘not being valued by one’s managers or the company’.
This is the work of a mentality that cannot even realize that it is more costly to find a replacement in place of the employee who has resigned.
I am ashamed even to write this, because it is as if we are talking about replacing broken glasses with new ones.
These are humans; they all have lives, families, hopes and dreams, but some industries consider this just as ‘turn-over’.
Anyway…
People who know me or read some of my articles know that I have little interest in research and statistics. All I care about are my gut feelings.
If your employee…
– Receives a salary he/she deserves and is sufficient for living humanely, and even if he/she has financial concerns, it is not because of the institution he/she works for,
– Has a reliable insurance, comfortable commute, healthy and sufficient food,
– Receives training related to his/her career or personal development that he/she believes in,
– Feels that his/her ideas are valued by his/her superiors and colleagues regardless of their rank, and is made to feel ‘seen and esteemed as equals’,
– And, of course, is able to find opportunities, and not threats in the business environment,
then, that is all that matters.
The people who feel like they belong, cling to their work in earnest, feel happy on their way to work in the morning, leave their private concerns relatively outside and come in and work in a friendly, passionate and caring manner.
I think it is necessary to incorporate a course on this subject in the school curriculum.
If I may, I would like to cite a few quotes from a project that we at MSA have been working on for nearly a year as a means to get to know ourselves better and to take healthier and more conscious steps as we grow our business both nationally and internationally. This is a project that will be published once it is fully complete.
– Brand: A guide to transforming passion into a profession/practice.
– Employees: A group of people who have come together for a common goal, who think that each member of this team is there because they are very good at what they do and are proud of their colleagues.
– My takeaway: A world of belonging, where being an MSA member is a source of pride.
I don’t like research, do I?
Thank goodness that our people do,
Thank goodness, I can produce something worth researching.