I heard an (ex)-employee horror story while traveling in Tokyo that showed that tech companies are not immune from having stupid policies. The lesson, if it needs to be repeated, is this: People are your most important asset. Don’t let accountants make HR policy. It goes like this:

The fellow, whom I will call Luke, worked for the Japanese branch of an American ecommerce company. Apparently the company as a whole had a poor year. In Japan, however, they performed above target, based in large part on the effort put forth by the employees.

When it came time to do a salary review, Luke was given a low single digit percentage raise, along with an $800 bonus. The explanation for the sorry increase and bonus was the poor performance of the parent company. The parent company had set the budget for raises and bonuses on this basis. Of course, the parent’s performance wasn’t even remotely in Luke’s control. He busted it all year long to be part of his unit’s outstanding performance, and reasoned that he should be compensated based on that performance.

Shortly thereafter, he resigned to take a position in the Japanese branch of another American company.

I don’t believe he was a mercenary employee - he just believed that his company had not matched the commitment he had given it throughout the year. Referring back to the Gallup Poll, one of the indicators of company success is “Someone at my company cares about me as a person.”

 How will your employees answer this question?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 9:52 am and is filed under Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.