Why Caring for Employees Is Important

Why Caring for Employees Is ImportantWhy Caring for Employees Is ImportantWhy Caring for Employees Is Important BlaszczykWhat principles guide yur companys leadership? Are they based on trust? Do they strive to help employees realize their true success? Is there a commitment to bringing out the best in every individual, and celebrating them?Those are a few of the guiding principles at leadershipat Barry-Wehmiller, a global capital equipment and engineering consulting company. As its chairman and CEO, Bob Chapman is committed to using the power of business to build a better world by treating every employee with integrity.Bob Chapman joins us to talk about his imagination of leadership, which he explains in his book Everybody Matters, the Extraordinary Power of Caring for Yur People Like Family. Its co-authored with Raj Sisodia, and the book is published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House.We invite you to tune in to this podcast. Listen on SoundCloudListen on iTunesGet ne w podcasts subscribe to the https//www.youtube.com/ Podcast Feed on iTunes Monster Bob, thank you so much for joining us.ChapmanIts a pleasure to be with you, thank you.MonsterIf I walked into any one of the 80 companies that comprise the Barry-Wehmiller world of global business, would I bedrngnisice anything different? Are employees treating each other differently? Is there a different tone to the place?ChapmanAs CEO, I might give a view, being CEO of the company, but what Id say to you is that we, in the last 4 years, weve had some amazing people from the field of education, authors of leadership, major consulting firms, send people in because theyve heard about our culture, and Im going to tell you what they said.They said, generischly to me, and thats why we wrote the book, they say these exact words, I have never seen anything like this. Amy Cuddy, who has the number two TED talk in the world, shes a Harvard professor, she talked to dozens of people in several of our plants, a nd she sat down and we taped our interview, and she said, I thought places like this only existed in my head. This is as close to Utopia as Ive ever seen.Id say to you, the universal feedback, and thats why we wrote the book. We didnt create this culture for any other reason than we were awakened to the need to care for our people, that its a fundamental responsibility of leadership to care for our people. When people started hearing about it, and asking to come in and see it, their statements were so strong, you know again, amazing people. One gentleman welches a contributing editor to Forbes, and he came in and spent two days talking to our people, and he said, Bob, Ive interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of CEOs, and Ive never seen anything like this.What they describe it as, Connie, is a family. Not like a family, they describe it as a family. Now why do they use the word family? Because where is our ultimate place of stahlkammerty and caring? Its the family unit. They use, a lmost without thinking, the word, family, to describe how they feel about it.MonsterThat, I think, is interesting that its coming from, in response to what the culture is creating, rather than saying that were a family, and as families we do this, because then that imposes a certain kind of dictation of how we do things, and from the top down. Thats probably not the model that youre talking about here.ChapmanNo. The model, people say to me, Can you boil it down into a really short sentence?, and I say, Yes, simply care. Care about the people whose lives are entrusted to you. We talk, and again my learning came from trying to be a parent of six children, trying to be a responsible parent, good husband, and raise good kids. I made a really dedicated effort to learn how to care for these precious lives that had been entrusted to us through birth.In the process, I was also trying to run a business that was challenged with management practices, that I learned in my management degree, and what I saw in the world of business.What I realized right around the late 1990s, early 2000, was that what I learned about parenting was about leadership. What I learned in business school was about management, and management is basically telling other people what to do, and using them for my success.Leadership is allowing people to come together in groups, create a vision for a better future, and realize it together, which is the number one source of happiness in the world, a good job working with people you enjoy.MonsterYou spend too many hours in a day to not have that kind of experience I would say.ChapmanRemember Connie, statistically 88% of all people who work in this country feel they work for an organization that does not care about them. Three out of four, according to Gallop, are disengaged in what theyre doing. The evidence is overwhelming that management is not the way we are called to treat each other.What we found is, I want your listeners to hear this, because I neve r heard this before this, we came to realize this, the way we treat people at work affects the way they go home and treat their families, their marriages, their children, others. For a fact, we know that.Therefore, if were sending people home every day, the vast majority of people who work in organizations go home feeling unappreciated for who they are, and used for what they know. We know that they treat their family less than they would intend to if they felt cared for themselves. Were destroying the family unit, we are creating the conflict in this country because were sending people home damaged.MonsterThat is so powerful, I guess it really seems to me to speak to corporate or company responsibility, and frankly I wonder if thats more than some businesses might have bargained for in this contract that youre talking about with employees.ChapmanI got an accounting degree at Indiana and then I went and got an MBA at Michigan, and then I got a job in Price Waterhouse, and then I wen t into business, and I was taught it was always about me and my success. I was never taught to care about other people. I was taught, you need to do this to have a successful career, and we call success, money, power and position.The revelation in our journey was that these people whose lives are entrusted to us every day are somebody elses precious child that was brought into this world with the hopes that that child could be who theyre intended to be.In business were destroying the hopes of these people. We used to call it people centric leadership when we first surfaced this idea of caring, leadership focused on people. Simon Sinek came in here and hes been here a million times now, and he said, Bob, this is truly human leadership. This is the way we are called to treat each other in the world.MonsterLets get down to some of the tactics and strategies that created this wonderful culture. How do you train managersto value creation at work, inspiring their employees, what approach do you take with those managers?ChapmanFirst of all, if I could ask something of all your listeners, I would beg them to stop using the word managers, bosses and supervisors, because those words imply behavior that is dysfunctional. We need teachers, coaches and mentors. We need people who care, and managers dont care, they use.We cant send anybody to our great graduate schools in this country because we dont teach leadership, we teach management. So we said, We got to teach it ourselves. We decided to create disciples, we needed to create a university to teach how to care, because we dont teach that. We teach how to use for your success.We started with a clean sheet of paper, and we created the idea from how pilots operated who are concerned with your safety, we created the idea of a leadership checklist. Things you need to think about every day when people enter your care. Then we began teaching and we created classes, started Barry-Wehmiller University where we teach classes on h ow to actualize our checklists.Were now a two and a half billion dollar company at 11,000 people around the world, and again I want to mention to your audience, this is a universal issue, and its not just in business, its in healthcare, its in the military, its in government, its in nonprofits.We are not creating leaders, we are creating managers, and managers manage, they dont inspire. We treat people with disrespect, we use them, which affects their health, it affects their family, it affects the next generation of children were raising. We dont need anything but to care.MonsterYou talk about the necessity to making it safe to care in a work environment, because maybe people might not automatically feel that this behavior is something that will be accepted or the nurturing of it, can you talk about that?ChapmanYeah, Simon Sinek calls it the circle of safety. Right now because of layoffs, downsizing, firings, all these things, people dont feel valued, and they dont feel safe, so th ey spend their time doing what it takes to do the job, giving just what it takes to do the job, and trying to protect their job. Not trying to help each other, trying to protect themselves because they dont want to be the person that shares with a young person that joins the company. People dont feel safe because of the behavior of leadership with downsizing, firings, not holding up good behavior.When people dont feel safe, they are protecting their jobs and not sharing. We had a goal simply to send people home fulfilled, theres where we started, and to send people home fulfilled, you need to care about them. The beauty of that is, when I care about you, you naturally feel safe caring about others. That means when I care about you, you also feel safe.MonsterIt is, on a daily basis, that the principles that youre talking about are exemplified and moved forward, and knitted together within a companys culture, but then theres also the push comes to shove moments when, say, in the 2008 recession, a lot of fallout, you talk about this in the book where everybodys talking about, well, were going to have to lay off people, were going to have to do this, and yet you took a very different approach. Can you explain that?ChapmanPrior to us embracing this expression, We measure success by the way we prise the lives of people, I would have laid off people, thats what we do in business. Its not personal, you know its just what you do in business.But my heart had been enlarged by this awareness of the way we touch the lives of people, so about a month or so later, having not taken any action, feeling we can get through it, I got an email when I was in Italy at our Italian operations where they said our order, just a major order, we had a big order with a large client was put on extended hold, and all of a sudden the work we had to kind of get us through our largest plant disappeared. I sat in my hotel room in Italy and said, Oh my god, what are we going to do?If we do what I , naturally, what everybody does, we will hurt people.I said to myself, If we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people, what would a caring family do if a caring family member was under stress? I thought, without question, we would all take a little pain so that nobody had to take a lot of pain.So I crafted some ideas, the most significant, which I had never heard of before, never, I mean nobody suggested it, never heard of it, I said, What if we all took a month off? Whenever we want so we can have a good time with our family or friends, et cetera, so that nobody has to be let go?I crafted the idea, John and I crafted an email back to our operations team back in St. Louis and I said, Im on my way back from Italy, give this thought how we could deploy this immediately.The reaction was amazingly positive, because people started volunteering to take other peoples time, they felt safe, they knew they werent going to be let go, and they didnt take a month off so the compa ny could make more money, they took a month off to help somebody else save their job.We got through that economic downturn and we bounced right out of it, and you cant believe what that meant to our people to feel safe, and to help their friends feel safe.I just read about a major corporation that laid off 1,900 people in the corporate offices, and they have 80,000 employees. Why would somebody announce theyd laid off 1,900 people when theyve got 80,000 people and they hired 9,000 last year? Because theyre sending a message to the market, to the market that theyre lowering out cost, so were going to be more profitable.Layoffs are used to send messages to the market, were going to be more competitive, were streamlining our business. Its viewed by investors as a positive message. Usually your share price goes up.Why do we have these major companies announcing layoffs? Because their share price goes up, because the market says, Good job, good job. Tough decision, good job. It was only because wed embraced these guiding principles of leadership that my mind went in a different direction than it had gone in the previous 35 years.Monster Is it really possible to change the marketplace, that response that youre talking about that the shareholders, the greater market? I dont know if its a knee jerk response, but okay, theyve laid off people, theyre serious about profits. Is it really possible through reforming or changing culture within a company to then change the thinking in the marketplace?ChapmanThats great question. I want to believe, Im an eternal optimist. I get a gunst der stunde to talk about this all over the world, and we operate all over the world, Italy and Germany and France and England, America, all over the country, everybody loves this message, nobody ever debates this message with me. It is so far out away from the conventional mentality of using people for our success.Somebody just said, and I gave a talk a couple of days ago, somebody said, You kno w what? Companies are, theyre all about products and profits. Theres no P for people in companies. Theyre simply, you know if we can justify letting some people go, if we got to send them home, you know theyll get another job, dont worry about it.Can we change? I dont think theres any question we can, all we have to do is care. We are going to scream at the top of every mountain, to my last breath, that this is the way we are called to live together, and this is what we want for our children, our friends children, and the worlds children. We want a chance for people to be a part of an organization where they feel safe, and valued, so that they can home and treat their family as theyve been treated.MonsterIs there data findings that can prove to people who say, Well, what about profits? What about shareholder interest and driving success that proves that this model works, that it actually creates and generates better profit?ChapmanIve got two answers for you. One is that when the ove rwhelming data says that 88% of the people go home feeling the company doesnt care for them, three out of four are disengaged, do you honestly believe that people are sharing their gifts fully with you in the various roles they have in the company? Clearly not.I would then say to you that in our company, we did not do it to improve our profitability, we did not do it to improve our culture, we did it because we were awakened to the fundamental caring for the people whose lives we touch.But, I would say to you, when we launched the new version of our company in 1988, we had a great business strategy shaped by our previous decade of experiences. We were doing very well, probably 10, 15%, 20% year growth in our share price, even though were a privately held company and we have kind of a quasi public price, so we measure our share price.We didnt do this to do better, we did it because we were awakened to the fundamental responsibility of leadership is to care for people. I would say to you, since we have done that, our performance has been amplified, and people, we are a company that we have acquired 79 companies around the world, never sold a company, we have dot companies, we dont manipulate companies.Now people are bringing companies to us because they want their company to be a part of a company that will care for their people beyond their ownership. I dont know how to monetize that, but Id say to you the benefits of caring for people far outweigh the cost.Monster If were remodeling business in the way that youre talking about, I think its going to open the door to a lot of people rethinking that, Well, maybe I can find what Im looking for in a company.ChapmanA year ago we hired 217 engineers from around the country, outstanding engineers. Last year we hired 175 engineers, the next 3 years we have to hire 700 engineers to meet what we think will be the demand for this, and we are finding people all over the country that say, If its really true that your compan y cares, thats where I want to work.How do you put it in economic terms. Im an accountant. I can justify anything, okay. If you just go to your heart and your head, why would you need to justify caring? If you sat down like I do and listen to the people that join us you cant believe what I hear. It affirms everything I told you statistically. It is brutal out there people. Why do they keep their jobs? Why do some people not leave? Because they cant afford to leave. If they change jobs, they figure, Im just going to go from one abusive situation to the other.MonsterThis has been such a powerful conversation. Id like to wrap it up just by asking you if you can consolidate one message that employers who are listening can take away to start to rethink how they approach, or bring caring into the workplace? I think that would be a great way to end.ChapmanWe actually wrote a quick summary of the message of the book, and thats what I give every CEO, and it basically says, Everybody wants t o do better, trust them. Leaders are everywhere in your company, find them. People achieve good things big and small and every day, celebrate those progresses with people every day. Some people wish things are different, listen to them. Everybody matters, show them.It is an unbelievably powerful model that allows people to live lives of meaning and purpose, and a chance for happiness in their life.When people are happy and joyful, they do amazing things. The simple message Connie is, all you have do is care. You dont need a memo from the board, you dont need anything other than to care. If you pick up the book, Everybody Matters, the reason we wrote the book is a lot, nobody debates it with us, but they dont know how to do it, they dont know how to care. What does it mean to care? Were not talking about parental care, were talking about human caring.If you read the book, it says this is how we care, and we want to share it with the world because we believe it will profoundly change the world for your listeners, as well as everybody theyre related to in the world, and it will make the world a better place.MonsterBob Chapmans book is, Everybody Matters, the Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, co-authored with Raj Sisodia. Its published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bob is chairman and CEO of Barry Wehmiller, a global capital equipment and engineering consulting company. Bob, thank you so much for speaking with me.ChapmanIt was an honor, thank you for the time, and I hope your listeners, if they have any questions, will contact us so we can share this journey. We want to make a difference in the world.We invite you to tune in to this podcast. Listen on SoundCloudListen on iTunesGet new podcasts subscribe to the https//www.youtube.com/ Podcast Feed on iTunesLearn more The Virtuous Cycle of Business Growth and People GrowthRead an excerpt from the book, Everybody Matters