The New Language of Employer-Employee Relations

The curse of a strong economy: A national unemployment rate of 4.5%. If you have direct reports -- even worse, if you have job vacancies right now -- you know where this is headed. When was the last time you had an abundance of candidates? Do you find yourself frequently compromising when it comes to new hires? Are you offering entry-level compensation packages that rival your own and still not luring applicants?

The "ideal" candidate has become as scarce as the Virginia Northern flying squirrel, the new Volkswagen Beetle and, for that matter, the wireless user who requests analog service.

Here's an easy aphorism that has become trite: People are our most valuable resource. People. Valuable. Resource. It's no coincidence that company directories in lobbies large and small have stripped out the administrative-edged "Personnel Department" and replaced it with the more gentle "Human Resources." The former implies an interchangeable body of persons; the latter recognizes the potential of women and men. As ardent as this sounds in a world that prides itself on disjoining emotional influences from business decisions, there is something to be said for the new language of employer-employee relations. Today's manager must accept that results don't beget results. People beget results. (My apologies to the NRA as well as to Euclidean programmers whose goal is to actually make results beget results.)

All of this is aimed to frame a horrifying (but true!) example of personnel management within our own industry.

Consider this scenario: A district sales manager for a wireless carrier in Westchester County, just north of New York, was recruited by a competitor. This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. She had three years' experience specializing in community event sales, exceeding quotas in her second and third years. She consistently won monthly and quarterly sales recognition programs. Her annual performance evaluations were above average, and her compensation package increased modestly each year. Based on her history with her employer, as well as her uncertainty about the new competitor's future, she chose to stay. Because she was sensitive to the antagonistic dynamics between the two companies, she never shared the details of the recruitment effort with her employer.

But someone else did. A previous company employee -- a research analyst who had moved to a clothing manufacturer and then returned to the wireless industry with the new competitor -- discussed the recruitment efforts with employees at both companies. You know what happened next. One person spoke to another, and another, and another, culminating in the district sales manager's employment being terminated because she had entertained a job offer from a competitor.

Can you list all the errors executed in the name of personnel principles, ignoring all acumen of "human resources?" Here's a scorebook: employee -- talent, discretion, loyalty anda keen understanding of the environment in which she worked; employer -- unwarranted distrust and (one hopes) short-term revenue losses in the now-orphaned territory.

Although this is an extreme example, it highlights dynamics that you might recognize at your own organization. In this age of downsizing and profit-before-people, corporate hubris has gone the way of the dinosaur. No matter how proud you are of your products, your company's quality standards and, ultimately, the grip you have on your best employees, the competitive market always will offer another company that is even more proud of its products, certain of its higher quality and, to your loss, willing to negotiate even better terms for your best employees.

Exercising a true understanding of human resources means respecting the individuals who contribute most effectively and then focusing on what they have to offer to your toughest competitors. Only then can you appreciate what it takes to make sure they remain a part of your team.