What Employees Want

Great people can work anywhere they choose. So if you want to fill your company with great people, you have to be pretty special. You have to offer compelling reasons to choose your company over others. Let’s start with what employees want.

Studies consistently show that employees want:

• Fair compensation (i.e., a competitive salary)
  Keep in mind that fair compensation for an “A” player is more
• than for a “B” or “C” player. For help in figuring out what is “fair compensation” for a particular job, see “How to Determine the ‘Going Rate’ for a Job.” (page
• Performance rewards
  When people do well, they want to be recognized and rewarded commensurately with the value they have delivered. And their needs fall into three categories: financial/material, social and personal. Material rewards include money, gifts or bonuses such as travel or training. Social rewards address people’s need for others to see them as valuable and special. So people want public recognition. Finally, people want to feel that they are appreciated by their boss and co-workers. This is harder to deliver because it can’t be fully communicated in a press release or check. The boss’ job is to make high achievers feel secure and genuinely appreciated. Trusting them with additional responsibility goes a long way.
• Respect
  Employees want to be treated with respect, i.e., listened to, understood, trusted, appreciated and cared for. For more on employees’ need for respect, see the page 9 article “Ask the Expert: Clifton Taulbert on Employees’ Need for RESPECT.”
• Stability
  Employees want to feel secure about where they are, whom they are working with, what they do, how they will be judged, what the rewards will be, and what the future holds. Your job as the business owner is to make sure the goals are clear and that you deliver on promises.
• Winning team
  Everyone wants to be a key player on a winning team. Winning is fun. Players on winning teams get special benefits, such as travel, trophies, recognition and respect from people outside of the organization. “A” players who lose faith that they’ll be able to win a championship on your team eventually will find another team to play on.

But as the business owner, you can’t just “give” these things to employees. You have to focus on becoming a great company that happens to offer things great employees want. So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to build a great company.