I noticed that many company mission statements do not include anything about the organization’s commitment to its employees.
The statement usually addresses what the company seeks to do for customers but says nothing about what it promises its employees.
It’s in a company’s self-interest to think about its treatment of employees, as it is well known that unhappy employees equal unhappy customers. Plus, from a corporate social responsibility standpoint, caring about your employees, and acting ethically toward them, is the right thing to do. And if all that weren’t enough, there are steep costs to frequent recruitment and new hire training.
I asked Google AI for examples of company mission statements that address an organization’s commitment to employees. The AI bot gave me three examples: Southwest Airlines, Adobe, and 3M.
- Southwest Airlines: “Dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit, while providing our employees with a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth.”
- Adobe: “We believe that when people feel respected and included, they can be more creative, innovative, and successful, which is why we are committed to investing in building a diverse and inclusive environment for our employees…”
- 3M: “Value and develop our employees’ diverse talents, initiative and leadership.”
It’s Easy to Overlook the Need to Commit to Employees
No matter what product or service your company specializes in, it’s likely that the marketplace for it is highly competitive. In a competitive environment, it’s too easy to focus solely on offering potential customers ever more. While that’s a good and logical thing to do, it becomes dangerous to the business if it isn’t balanced with employee care. If you sacrifice your employees’ well-being to give customers what they want, a significant amount of the additional money you generate may go to recruitment and new hire training and finding ways to offset bad publicity.
If you’re a company as big and powerful as Amazon, the bad publicity may not matter, but if you’re an average-sized or small company, the effect could be catastrophic. This is especially true if you operate in a small community or close-knit industry where people tend to know each other. Horror stories of working for you are unlikely to attract new customers. Instead, there may be resentment about throwing business your way after the terrible experience a relative or friend, or a person themselves, had as your employee.
What Should You Commit to Your Employees?
Once you decide that it’s worth caring about your employees, what should you commit to doing for them?
If you wanted to be generous (and fair), you could commit to a competitive salary, or at least one that meets current industry benchmarks as average for each job role. Doing so, however, can be risky if you find yourself in tough economic times and are unable to do that.
Instead, you could focus on ensuring employees enjoy work conditions that promote well-being. You could go the extra mile and state that you will never sacrifice employee well-being for profitability.
If your company’s employees are governed by a union, work hours and conditions appear to be mostly regulated. If your employees have no union, it’s up to an ethical employer to commit to never working the employees beyond what is conducive to well-being.
Everyone has a different definition of well-being, but, in general, most can agree that employees who were hired to work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. jobs should not regularly be forced to work in the evenings or on the weekends. If it happens regularly, overtime pay or extra paid vacation time would be in order.
Employees Can Help Write Your Mission Statement
If you aren’t sure what employees need from you, enlist their help writing the part of the mission statement that relates to their welfare.
You could get a randomly selected cross-section of maybe 20 employees from all levels of the company, entry-level to senior management, and in widely varying job roles, from customer-facing employees to back-end workers. Ask them what they need from you to maintain a sense of well-being. You may be surprised at the things they mention.
What does your mission statement say about your treatment of employees? If it doesn’t say anything about this, would you consider adding it?