Ex CEO of Southwest airlines Herb Kelleher was considered a heretic for saying at Southwest customers come second (employees come first). You only need to look at global engagement figures that finds less that 20% of employees are engaged, the rest either or not engaged or actively disengaged to know most publicly traded companies treat their employees as factors of production. You use Apple as a counter example but by all accounts Jobs was a tyrant and an aberrant boss to work for. I’d suggest humane treatment of employees comes from a leadership culture that is greater than any one CEO - we know how transient they are in public ally traded companies. Can publicly traded companies (vs the vast majority of other types of organisms) truly put employees first due to their structural impediments to do so of the focus on quarterly profits and a small cabal of shareholders? I’d look at other organisational forms for that, e.g. family run businesses like the German Mittelstand ‘Hidden champions’ that are the heart & engine of the German export juggernaut.
I wonder if there is an investible ranking out there of companies that treat their employees well?
By the way, I am sure there are a lot of different definitions out there of what constitutes "good treatment". The free coke and Tischfussball of a startup is one thing, but I'd rather stress the concept of enabling employees to do their job well, with as much at-work education as needed, and with as little bureaucracy as possible.
Thanks Joachim, wow, Cisco #2? They were a meat grinder under Chambers, they must have changed. You may well have written about this but is this the ‘g’ under ESG? I know the whole esg debate is fraught…asking for a friend.😁 Thank you for your continued insightful articles💜
Thank you for this article, look forward to reading it. Looks like time for a repeat study. Tricky to find causation between employee relations and performance as there is so much’noise’ / confounding variables but the notion is self evident.
Yes, an investible ranking of companies that treat their employees well would be great. I am a member of and invest in zebras unite, a facilitator of Co-ops in the US which is a good proxy…without the coke & Tischfussball 😂
Agreed. Small businesses have an advantage in that they know all or most personally. In a big corporation you are a cog in the machine. We used to have ‘staff’ or ‘personnel’ departments. Now it is ‘human resources’: you are a resource to be exploited just like a machine.
Ex CEO of Southwest airlines Herb Kelleher was considered a heretic for saying at Southwest customers come second (employees come first). You only need to look at global engagement figures that finds less that 20% of employees are engaged, the rest either or not engaged or actively disengaged to know most publicly traded companies treat their employees as factors of production. You use Apple as a counter example but by all accounts Jobs was a tyrant and an aberrant boss to work for. I’d suggest humane treatment of employees comes from a leadership culture that is greater than any one CEO - we know how transient they are in public ally traded companies. Can publicly traded companies (vs the vast majority of other types of organisms) truly put employees first due to their structural impediments to do so of the focus on quarterly profits and a small cabal of shareholders? I’d look at other organisational forms for that, e.g. family run businesses like the German Mittelstand ‘Hidden champions’ that are the heart & engine of the German export juggernaut.
I wonder if there is an investible ranking out there of companies that treat their employees well?
By the way, I am sure there are a lot of different definitions out there of what constitutes "good treatment". The free coke and Tischfussball of a startup is one thing, but I'd rather stress the concept of enabling employees to do their job well, with as much at-work education as needed, and with as little bureaucracy as possible.
the closest list I know of is the "Best companies to work for" ranking that is published every year: https://fortune.com/great-place-to-work-rankings/
There is even some evidence these companies have better firm performance than the rest of the market but it is weak: https://www.boardoptions.com/100bestandperformance.pdf
Thanks Joachim, wow, Cisco #2? They were a meat grinder under Chambers, they must have changed. You may well have written about this but is this the ‘g’ under ESG? I know the whole esg debate is fraught…asking for a friend.😁 Thank you for your continued insightful articles💜
Thank you for this article, look forward to reading it. Looks like time for a repeat study. Tricky to find causation between employee relations and performance as there is so much’noise’ / confounding variables but the notion is self evident.
Dankeschön!
Yes, an investible ranking of companies that treat their employees well would be great. I am a member of and invest in zebras unite, a facilitator of Co-ops in the US which is a good proxy…without the coke & Tischfussball 😂
Agreed. Small businesses have an advantage in that they know all or most personally. In a big corporation you are a cog in the machine. We used to have ‘staff’ or ‘personnel’ departments. Now it is ‘human resources’: you are a resource to be exploited just like a machine.