How I Think About Our Employees + This Season’s Celebrations

How I Think About Our Employees 

This month we are honored with a placement on Crain’s Best Employers in Ohio list. It was gratifying and humbling and we know we owe it all to our incredible team. In the spirit of celebrating and evolving the discussion about employee engagement and optimization, here’s my list of goals for creating the best team I can. I’m deliberately calling these goals. We haven’t achieved all of them, but we walk with them and towards them every day.  

 1. Leaders and managers must be top notch and experienced with exceptional emotional intelligence, strategic and people skills.

2. Compensation plans that are at or (ideally) above market. 

3. A strong culture that encourages curiosity, fun, and open and candid communications across all levels, tiers and positions. 

4. A clear, written and mutually agreed upon path to career growth. 

5. Challenging work assignments. 

6. Both formal and informal evaluation processes, with specific improvement ideas and understanding by managers and support, tools and resources needed by the employee to improve.  

7. Public and private recognition of both wins and effort, as well as cultural consistency. 

8. In addition to cash compensation, benefits and non-cash rewards. Incentives must be meaningful.  

9. The employee must be working, as much as possible, in their most talented type of activity, what Dan Sullivan calls Unique Ability or the Conscious Leadership Group calls Zone of Genius. Leaders should implement screens like Strengths Finder or Kolbe or Culture Index to facilitate that goal. 

10. Exceptions regarding projects and job descriptions and performance must be super clear, concise, understood and (ideally) agreed upon. 

11. The company’s vision, core values and goals must be communicated with maximum buy-in. 

12. Non-performers who can’t or won’t improve, or who toxify the environment, must be escorted off the bus as soon as the above becomes clear. 

13. Lastly, a constant reminder to leadership that we work for them, not the other way around. They can work wherever they want. We owe our employees the best experiences we can, or they will work for someone who can do better. 

These are the goals we are hitting or aiming to achieve. What is a top priority of your employee engagement plan? Drop us a note and we may feature your contribution in the next issue of The Fix. 

The core purpose of everyone at Gertsburg Licata—the reason we get out of bed in the morning to come to work here—is to “Create Freedom and Growth for Entrepreneurs and their Ventures.” Everything we do serves that purpose. Here’s to more freedom for you in the near future!