Do I Owe My Employees a Career Path?
boss.blogs.nytimes.com
boss.blogs.nytimes.com
As for more responsibility, just give people more say in how the company is run. If your employers are better at something than you ever see yourself being, they probably have insights that you would never have. Ask them. Implement their ideas.
I don't think people really want to feel overpaid or overextended any more than they want to feel underpaid or underutilized. If employees are asking for more money or more responsibility, it's probably because they feel underpaid or underutilized, not because they want excess.
Rather than throw money at a problem why not find ways to increase overall satisfaction? If money is a component of that, then great, but it doesn't motivate everyone. Often times people are looking for a better quality of life outside of the workplace: things like more time off to spend with their families mean a lot to some people and, if executed properly, don't hurt your bottom line either.
a. Running your own toilet cleaning business.
or
b. Retirement.
Perhaps give your employees stock or the responsibility of making decisions in their specialty areas. Or, give them something like 20% time where they can be creative. Perhaps they'll create some beautiful, original woodwork that gets you press on your blog. Or, perhaps, it just enriches their lives and keeps them happy.
Golden handcuffs are not going to create fulfilled employees. Just look around HN, golden handcuffs create runway and a strong motivation to use it.
Not that compensating employees well is a bad idea - particularly on a production line good wages create stability. The difficulty is that a production line has less outlet for creativity because the schedule is tight and creative time means shutting down the line. Once a company adopts the factory model, their options are limited and regardless of intentions, everyone cannot become a manager - only one or two will.
Not to go against the immediate interests of my fellow workers, but how often have we seen advice to people to build up a fund so they can afford to go off and do what they really want - 6 months in the bank (or whatever) to let them really test a theory and start on their dream project? The better you pay those staff, the quicker they can build up that fund and leave you.
Which isn't to say staff should be underpaid and glad of it! but that salary is only part of what keeps someone working where they are. Pay people fairly for the value they add to your business but treat them well and value their skills and intelligence and they won't need to move on to try out their dream because you'll be providing them a platform where they can test it and you can reap the profits.
-a job that made a difference at the company
-a share of the rewards
Give your employees those two things and they'll stick around.
- a job that made a difference at the company
- $10,000,000
A company that has a near monopoly and provides essential services? That's stock that will probably have value in 30 years or longer.
Everyone's knee-jerk reaction to using the word "owe" will be no. But I think the question is an interesting one that I, at least, don't know the answer to. On the yes side, there is the possibility of long-term retention and providing more benefit to employees as a recruitment tool. On the no side, the potential for these employees to then leave for better jobs, the resource drain in creating such a program, the difficulty placing these people within a small company, etc.
So I'm curious to hear what people who've had this experience think -- is it better for the company?
On the one hand, this was basically our primary marketing tool. We talked about our tools, other engineers saw them and convinced their companies to buy our software. On the other hand, our engineers were constantly in contact with people from big companies (Google, MS, ...) that tried to recruit them.
Curiously, only one of our engineers ever left the company voluntarily (that was me, after four years), so apparently the boss managed to create a work environment that was so great that even constant top-dollar recruitment attempts by other companies had no effect.
Think of all the job postings you've seen asking for 5 years experience in language X and 10 years experience in platform Y. Employers seem to want ever more specialization out of their developers, which for the most part is exactly the opposite of what is in the developer's own best interests. What developer wants to end up wedded to a single platform or language - if they're smart, or even just ambitious, they'll know that technical knowledge has a frightfully short shelf life. Not to mention that the only way to get a promotion or raise as a developer is typically to jump ship and go somewhere else. So it seems to be in their own best interests to branch out and try new things, which typically involves going elsewhere.
In the software industry, at least, employers by and large feel little if any obligation to give their developers a career path, and that's why most developers move around so much. Not that I don't understand the employer's motives as well - especially in a field as in demand as development can be, why should they feel an obligation to give us a career path when we can essentially write our own ticket if we choose to?
Don't feel any obligation to give your employees a career path, then - but don't expect them to stick around either. And no, it's not because they're lazy or spoiled or entitled or disloyal - it's a simple matter of economic incentives.
Being an expert in one obscure technology is an excellent way to become a consultant.
If you don't want to spend your career maintaining someone else's code, then it's probably a bad idea to specialize in one technology.
Even just increase pay over time past what they'll earn elsewhere. They'll keep doing their highly specialized job because no one else can hire them at a competitive rate.
Find areas they can flex their brains that don't cost you much. Say, publicity stunt woodworking (I'm sure you could make things that get you press), novelty items you can use as gifts to prospective clients, etc, completely designed and done by these skilled tradesmen.
Or hell, just give them stupid amounts of time off. It's very hard to leave a place that has 20-40 days of vacation.
Or even make a community oriented approach. Have them teach a class on X etc to the community, mentor at risk kids, etc.
It points out a real contradiction. If you want to be able to pay people a lot, you need to create an environment where they can be highly productive. The answer for that, in industrial systems, is specialization. If the people are having to think a lot about what they do, they'll spend their time thinking, doing different things, and fixing problems caused by doing things differently -- this work isn't paying work since it comes off their wages.
Another part of the problem is that there are fewer spots the higher up you go on the pyramid. The other day I was browsing the remainder rack at my local Uni's bookstore and found that there's now a "One Minute Manager" book about managing yourself.
I guess these days organizations are being hollowed out, so that few people have a chance to be promoted to management and that many of us don't get the managerial attention we need.
He realized that compared to what he was paying me to work, these were small costs to make sure I could work effectively and to help build the company. Consequently, I had enough respect not to abuse the privilege.
I'm always shocked when I talk to friends at other companies who bitch about working with shitty machines or generally not having the right tools. Generally my rule of thumb would be 10% of salary for upgrades/tools/software. Think about it: for a salary of $50k, what's adding another $5k/year to significantly improve an employee's productiveness?
Also important is to let them make the decision, not just arbitrary upgrades.
Whether providing a career path at the company, or providing employees with improved skills and marketable experiences that will set them up for the next step in their "portable career path", businesses should recognize there is social responsibility in the employer/employee relationship. As an example, the career positioning and experiences gained by a 25 year old employee can have tremendous and direct impact on their life, and that of their families.
With that said, there are certainly limits to what a business can sustain. Some forethought in employee selection (right people on the bus), a little bit of coaching and mentoring, and understanding the goals of the employee can go a long way to creating a work experience that goes beyond the basic career path.
But having a career path is something you can pitch to prospective employees as an additional reason for working at your company.
Besides that, the jump from "lead engineer" to "frontline manager" should be something that's not just "be at the right place at the right time" or "sucking up to the right upper level manager" I think corporations universally handle this transition poorly, probably due to looking at people as "human resources".
Should you provide a career path? Sure, you outlined all that in the article. You need to keep highly-skilled longtime employees somehow.
I reckon that the founder/manager/owner is not the only one that deserves a career path (he went from running a one man band to actually managing people). And someone coming to you and saying - I want to do your work has to be the most awesome thing an entrepreneur could get to hear. You have a willing replacement so you can move to something even cooler - now that is some sweet burden.
What seems like a more interesting question to me is how can I get people to want to take my job consistently?
So plan for it, prepare for it, and work with your employees to prepare succession plans for when they do leave.
I know developers who've written basically nothing but RPG for 18+ years. Same principle. Mush.
Once I hire a person, I expect them to approach me with their career aspirations and ideas. It is primarily their responsibility to come up and discuss/suggest opportunities for growth. Failing to do that, I actually think they become one of those idle 6s the article is talking about. I should also note that at this point I start looking for a replacement.
But do I owe them a career path? No. I owe them honesty and transparency, which includes not misrepresenting what the opportunities for growth are for a particular position they are being hired into.
Of course I am talking about those roles where personal ambition is indispensable, and where proactive behavior is highly valued. Genuine desire to grow and evolve is very natural and needs to be accommodated, but it can't take the form of personal interest completely eclipsing team interests and overarching direction and goals. That's a balance every manager needs to strike.
You may consider that under this strategy, your work force will self select amongst the extrovert go-getters. This may be exactly what you want, or the complete opposite. It all depends to what degree your business relies on typically introvert traits such as creativity or lateral thinking.
But if you are ok with that, I am ok with that.
There seems to be a bias that a career path exclusively means promotions but in this case rotations can provide new challenges and benefits that will naturally cause an increase in pay.
http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate-driv...
And if raising his prices isn't feasible, maybe his employees don't deserve a raise.