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How to Keep a Healthy Bottom Line

Written by: Peter Nicholls

Article Overview: Her day is non-stop from 7.10 am to 7.10 am next morning. How much would her boss care? Probably very little. But the boss isn't necessarily the ogre. Every working person carries their work and personal problems 24/7. A healthy bottom line depends on regarding all people at work as humans, not resources.

How to Keep a Healthy Bottom Line

Her day began at 7.10 am with the alarm rousing her from bed and ended at 7.10 am the next morning as she again roused herself from her bed. This was the subject of a thoroughly enjoyable fifteen-minute one-woman stage play, satirising the life of the average suburban young wife. She simply could not find the time to do everything she wanted to do. In truth, if she had kept going the way she did in the play she would soon have been, at best, burnt-out or, at worst, dead.

The “7.10 am to 7.10 am” idea is a great way of illustrating that life is a seamless continuum. People carry their work and personal problems 24 hours a day, with demands having little respect for the traditional 9-5 office prime time, or the desire to devote the weekend to leisure and recreation.

Every human resource expense of a business has to be justified in terms of “the bottom line” - income over expenditure. The factors affecting the bottom line have long been regarded as totally confined to the being totally within the confines of the work environment and work ethic thinking. But work ethic thinking is under attack from the stresses, pressures and constant changes in 21st century society.

How much would the employer of our 7.10 am lady have known - let alone cared - about her lifestyle? Very little if at all. But the employer - especially the direct manager - isn't necessarily the ogre of the story. He/she is also leading a very busy life, possibly even busier than the lady of our story. When it comes to life pressures (not just work pressures), every organisation becomes a flat line structure with staff from the CEO to the most junior all having life issues weighing them down. I especially feel for middle-level managers who, on top of these pressures, have to be the meat in the sandwich between the demands of staff and executives alike. Often they are in a no-win situation.

If an employer wants to keep good staff, he/she has no choice but to be conscious of each employee as “a whole person”, not simply a work-place resource. It doesn't mean the employer has to know everything about each employee's life/lifestyle. Think of it like a salesperson/customer relationship. The salesperson needs to know enough about the customer to recognize that the customer is an emotional, unpredictable, often irrational human being who buys for their own reasons, not those of the salesperson or the sales company. The fact that employees ‘buy their job' to supply their personal needs is now an at least equally influential factor on job selection as the employer's desire to buy the services of people to achieve company's aims.

Even in these tough economic times, employers are recognizing the impact this is having on the financial bottom line of the business. Contrary to past economic downturns many businesses are now trying to retain good staff through the bad times so they are around when the good times return.

So if you want good staff to keep your bottom line healthy, remember people aren't simply workplace resources but emotional human beings - just like you.

And that's the bottom line!

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Article Tags: bottom line, century society, confines, human resource, leisure and recreation, level managers, life pressures, line structure, little respect, next morning, ogre, personal problems, prime time, seamless continuum, stage play, stresses, work environment, work ethic, work pressures, young wife



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