Take Care of Your Employees

author: Lee Buttolph

When I was getting ready to attend the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) I had a friend who was* a Marine sit me down and tell me the reasons why the military needs officers.

The role of an officer is to:

    1. Complete the mission

    2. Take care of the Marines

In this exact order.  The reason it has to be in this order is sometimes an officer has to put his Marines in harm's way in order to complete the mission.

He continued on, providing me with the true wisdom of the officer’s role.  “But, if you take care of your Marines, they will take care of the Mission.”

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Let’s translate this into business speak.

The role of management is to:

    1. Make money

    2. Take care of the employees

In this exact order.  The reason it has to be in this order is because sometimes management has to make decisions that could result in employees performing jobs they prefer not to or even being laid off.

But, if the management team takes care of their employees, they will make sure the company makes money.

Take care of your employees.  Pay them well.  Give them good benefits.  Support them in their efforts to make your company better.  Be tough and have high standards.  Don’t be ‘Old Doom and Gloom and play gotcha games where you find every fault in their plans.  Be enthusiastic.  Be their cheerleader.  Be the one person they know they can go to when they are having problems.  Don’t be a pushover.  Treat them like adults.  Take their word as truth until given a reason not to.

*Once a Marine, Always a Marine