Are employees really at the heart of the business?

This weeks’ HR Hour on Twitter was certainly an interesting one!

The first question this week was “we often hear ‘people are our most important asset’ and similar statements. But is that essence really true in todays workplace?”. As you can imagine, this caused quite a discussion.

People should be the most important asset but it often gets forgotten, it is usually centred around the objectives/results with little regard on how they are achieved. A lot of people agreed with this, but the general consensus was that we generally need to be better with people related stuff.

@CIProjectsUK said “Organisations that live & breathe this ethos are the ones striving in today’s world – it’s all about people! You can launch whatever marketing campaign, implement whatever “efficient” process or introduce a shiny system – but without happy & valued people you have nothing”.

It is easy to state that employees are a company’s greatest asset but we have all witnessed, and continue to witness companies that claim to have their people at the heart of their business, but in reality do not actually treat their employees well. To actually practice what you preach, is easier said than done.

Without people, the business simply wouldn’t exist; there would be no policy, no process and no requirement for technology. People are very much at the heart of the business but yet so many still fail to realise that they are missing out on a wealth of opportunity. It’s not rocket science; enable people to become high performers and in turn you will see the return on your investment.

@recruiterguynw said “Most companies simply don’t understand that looking after their people will fix 99.9% of problems. Happy people = happy employees = better performing. It’s not rocket science”

Couldn’t have put it better myself Ben!

@SaraJDux stated “The problem is some orgs see investing in their people as just the salary investment, I pay them X so I expect Y. Or I pay for a training course. We still need to get better at the ‘whole person’ stuff”.

Blanket approaches are the norm in most organisations who struggle to see what the issues are with a one size fits all approach, @BarryJFlack thinks we need to challenge this more “The company cares about productivity, typically achieved by the lowest amount of time/money possible”.

@c_newbery said “In this increasingly knowledge-focused economy, I can’t see why this can’t be the case. Most orgs don’t ‘make’ things in the traditional sense – we only have the skills & expertise of our people to offer/distinguish us from the competition”.

One of my favourite tweets came from @PerryTimms “People are the reason any company even exists. No-one ever set up a company that didn’t need or serve people. The “…asset” platitude needs to go. Instead, companies could describe what they DO for their own people to show how they believe in and appreciate them.”

As cheesy as the phrase may be; I strongly believe that people should be at the heart of every business, they are the driving force to enable the business to achieve it’s goals, without them, the business would have nothing.