A reader writes:
I lead a producing enterprise that I co-founded over a decade in the past. It turned its first revenue lately, however all this time, we because the homeowners have taken care of everybody by taking colossal private debt and making unbelievable sacrifices, together with working ourselves a median of 60 hours per week.
We now have at all times managed to pay our employees on time and to extend wages and advantages steadily even when the enterprise was faring fairly badly, insulating them from our woes. We attempt to personally help workers and to verify they really feel safe, continue to grow and that the tradition stays secure, wholesome, and dynamic.
We additionally make a deliberate effort to watch the unwritten guidelines of “bosshood.” We stayed silent when a disgruntled ex-employee was badmouthing us round city. We ignore the occasional unfair on-line evaluate, tackle the suggestions, and hope that the opposite opinions will steadiness out the story. We settle ultimate pay cheerfully and promptly for workers who’ve delivered no worth we are able to detect. We bend over backwards to position star workers we can not maintain. Briefly, the corporate goals to maintain the ethical excessive floor, it doesn’t matter what.
However frankly, I really feel exhausted and exploited. I don’t anticipate kudos. However how about mere professionalism and reciprocal human decency?
It appears to me that the tradition fails to acknowledge workers might be bullies who victimize employers. Who determined that the worker is at all times proper? Don’t each side have duty to be truthful, sane, and cordial? The place does my duty as a “good” employer begin and finish? Please assist me make sense of this.
I reply this query over at Inc. at the moment, the place I’m revisiting letters which were buried within the archives right here from years in the past (and typically updating/increasing my solutions to them). You can learn it right here.