The truth about Employee and Employer relationship in the absence of the main 3 measurable KPI
When people take photos with a celebrity; they don’t always do it because they’re huge fans - they might not even know what movie or show they were in. So why are they asking for that photo and posting it on their social media?
It’s because this post will increase their social currency; for most, a currency that’s more important than actual money. Most of us spend our lives building this asset to feed our egos and to validate ourselves through other people’s acceptance of us. Growing this currency and improving people’s perception of ourselves are the two main sources of social currency.
We have conversations with certain people, we tell interesting anecdotes, we wear the latest brands, we post about our fascinating travel spots, we work hard; all to distinguish ourselves and raise our social currency. A currency that can’t be measured or weighed by any scale; only valued by our own subconscious.
In the case of low performing teams, everyone tries to protect their own assets. Employers want to see return on their financial investments (their employees) and the employees want to protect themselves after a poor appraisal that was based on their skills and competency.
Managers think that employees will improve their performance after a bad review, but usually, the employee ends up disgruntled asa they feel their managers were unjust and inaccurate in their evaluations; meaning they are taking away from their social assets without any valid reason. This means that managers are touching upon one of the most important aspects of an employee’s life; which can be risky in the long term.
Simultaneously, businesses start to lose money and thus the start of a sinking ship. The company isn’t as productive or lucrative as it used to be and managers will think it’s due to their employees’ declining performance. Managers can’t let them go as they do all the work but they can’t keep them as it will drain the company’s financial resources, so the only solution is to push them to improve their work. This is the case for many underperforming organisations; they fall victim to protecting their failing assets, it becomes a time bomb… which leads to the start of a cold war.
No one wants to work at these types of organisations and managers want to improve their working culture, the only way to prevent this and move forward is to take action immediately. In a world of high performing entities; visibility is essential. Everyone has different opinions on visibility; we believe visibility is a mutual agreement between both parties (managers and employees) made possible by setting expectations.
These agreements might not eliminate all the problems to do with productivity, but it will definitely address the issue of the cold war. There won’t be any misunderstandings or victims anymore; it turns into a self evaluation for the employees since there won’t be any subjective feedback to drain their social assets. The agreement should also address how exceptions and conflicts will be handled to ensure both sides are satisfied.
To form a fair agreement between the company and employees, we need to define the position of both parties; the company as a buyer and the employee as a seller. In this case, it is the company that’s a buyer (not the manager) because the agreement is with the company and only facilitated by the manager.
A buyer and Seller Agreement has Long Been Defined as:
In the absence of such an agreement, you will always find an issue between the buyer and the seller. That's exactly what is happening in failing companies; there's no proper agreement that clearly defines those four items between the buyer (company) and the seller (employee). In addition, companies define what they're buying instead of just taking what the employee offers. Furthermore, companies don't link pay to deliverables; they link it to skills, as if they are buying the employee and not the deliverables. Fixed salaries, regardless of the deliverables, are one of the worst employment factors. It doesn’t do the employer or employees any justice. I will take an example from one of our new hires in digital marketing.
As a company I need to increase my sales by increasing leads coming from the web. We as a company started looking at our options and found these solutions:
The first two options gave us a retainer stating the cost per lead. For every lead, we will get charged $100 and will be provided with a minimum of 100 leads per month. For the lead to be considered valid; we will contact the customer, receive an email from that customer confirming their interest in the project, and we are guaranteed that 30% of these leads will be converted to sales orders.
When we approached the employees, they requested a lump sum salary of $10,000 to perform the task as they have the skills. We requested the candidates (employees) to send in their offer in the same way we received it from the digital company and freelancer. We came to an agreement with three of these employees and signed an agreement upon these conditions:
A month later, we studied the results; two employees were able to generate more than $15,000 per month, which added up to more than they expected. The third employee managed to generate $6,000 and decided to part ways with us, with no hard feelings.
The Employee’s Agreement Details Included:
To sum it up: most companies are buying their employees’ time and not the deliverables. Employees are expected to work and report to management for 8 hours a day in average cases. This might be practical in reactive jobs where employees would have to respond to ad hoc requests like a bank teller, cashier, workers in the manufacturing industry; however, it's not practical in proactive jobs like sales or digital marketing, especially in today’s climate.
In such scenarios, the dedication payment is to ensure that the employee doesn't work for other companies, which could create conflicts in the long run. Even for reactive jobs that require employees to report to an office, it is recommended to keep a small percentage for result-based deliverables to encourage employees to keep working hard.
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