How willing is your organization to go above and beyond to take care of its associates? - SmartBrief

All Articles Leadership How willing is your organization to go above and beyond to take care of its associates?

How willing is your organization to go above and beyond to take care of its associates?

Last week's poll question: How willing is your organization to go above and beyond to take care of its associates?

2 min read

Leadership

SP_series1_purple_v1

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 220,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our newsletter.

How willing is your organization to go above and beyond to take care of its associates?

  • Extremely. We’ve done amazing things to take care of people: 10.1%
  • Very. We’ll go well above expectations for our people: 26.9%
  • Kind of. We’ll do special things in extraordinary circumstances: 34.9%
  • Not very. It’s rare that we’d go out of our way for our people: 19.2%
  • Not at all. I’m surprised people are still willing to work here: 8.9%

Putting people first. It’s a tired old trope that “our people are our most valuable asset.” What makes that ring hollow is the fact that we don’t do all we can to help our associates. While a solid portion of poll respondents state that their organizations do a lot for their people, a scary number of you say that you don’t go out of your way to take care of your team. While you don’t have to take on extraordinary gestures to make your team members feel important and valued, some gestures do help. Consider that your employees know there are other organizations out there that will take care of them. Factor that into your decision on whether or not to go out of your way to help that person. If not, they might not stick around.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS. Before launching his own company, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He’s the author of three leadership books: “One Piece of Paper,” “Lead Inside the Box” and “The Elegant Pitch.”