Back to the Basics
I will never forget the first week in my first role as an HR generalist. Up until this point in my career, I had never hired or fired people, and I had certainly never spent eight hours searching for a paycheck.
My very first Friday in this new role, an employee came to my office and said he had changed his direct deposit information, and noticed his check hadn’t come through. He apologized for bothering me about it, but said he only had six dollars to get through the weekend.
This meant he would receive a paper check until the new direct deposit went into effect. I spent the next eight hours trying to track down his paycheck, frantically going back and forth between two facilities, multiple shipping docks, scouring envelopes and boxes and shipping containers. And by the end of the day, fighting back tears, I had to tell him we weren’t able to find his check and the new one would be here on Monday.
That was a Friday full of frustration for me. And at the end of the day, I still felt I had failed at the basics of my job.
If you lead people, you have a complex role with numerous aspects that are incredibly important. Let’s simplify all that for a moment and go back to the basics of the two most important jobs you have as a manager.
1. Send people home safe everyday.
In 2016, workplace injuries and illnesses impacted nearly 3 out of every 100 workers in the U.S. Even one is still too many. Your employees (and their families) are trusting you to proactively keep their working conditions safe.
2. Make sure your people get paid.
78% of Americans that work full-time are now living paycheck to paycheck. That means most of your employees do too. Make sure they get paid, every time, on time.
There are things that happen that are beyond our control. Do everything you can to make it right as quickly as you can, and do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
By the way, that employee’s leader stepped in and gave him some cash to get through the weekend, to make sure he wouldn’t go hungry. Sometimes the most important things we can do for people are actually the most obvious.