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The Company We Keep: Respect Builds For Employers
Business Essentials
Posted: January 26th, 2006 01:06 PM EDT
File this article under "Why I Bother To Try So Hard" or "My Small Business Matters Big Time."
As our society relies more upon the safety net provided by today's good companies, there's more honor than ever to be found as an EMPLOYER. This first Business Essentials column of 2006 urges you to recognize the distinction that the role of employer is gathering and to use this rewarding emotional fuel to propel you through the sluggish New Year Blues.
By the time you read this it's most likely mid-January and the year-end holidays will have just come to a bittersweet close. It's a reflective time when you're caught somewhere between memories and promises; reviewing last year's performance while at the same time making some business resolutions for the new year ahead of you. Your operation might be experiencing the winter sales slowdown that hits most firms at about this time. Some of your employees may be grumbling that they won't see another day off until spring. It's also the time when news outlets invariably report on signs of "economic uncertainty" telling us to use caution in the coming year. All of which simply makes you want to lay down your cards and your head and sit out the next few hundred hands - but you can't and you don't because you are relied upon by too many people. YOU ARE AN EMPLOYER.
Each year business owners face this agonizing test; the "I don't want to start all over again" moment. Have you gone through this corporate version of torture yet? If you have then you know the pain. But there's some wonderful news to share when it comes to the new status forming around the role of an employer. An evolution is taking place - a shift in both thought and feeling that will bring you, the small business owner, a new helping of respect and recognition to carry you through far more than just this day. But first, let's remind ourselves of the very essence of who we are:
In America Small Can Be BIG
Let's get some perspective. Most small business owners know that, as a group, they significantly contribute to the general standard of living. However, they rarely know to what extent they make the American Dream a reality for so many. Our government labels organizations with fewer than 500 employees as "small businesses." Pretty funny, isn't it? Can you imagine having 500 employees? Would that seem small to you? Here are some numbers to consider:
- Small firms represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms in the United States
- Small companies employ HALF of all private sector employees
- Being small doesn't mean we're not competitive. Small businesses cover 45 percent of the total payroll
- Small businesses generate approximately 80 percent of all new jobs in the recent decade
- Small companies represent 99.9 percent of the 25 million total businesses in the United States, leaving just 17,000 "large" firms to pull the rest of the weight
Lessons? First, as assumed, smaller businesses are the economic backbone of our country, but we don't just push dollars around - we employ half our fellow countrymen and women and create the lion's share of the new jobs. Secondly, there is no such thing as a little unimportant employer - especially as the real meaning of the word continues to grow well beyond traditional definitions. Employers are just too vital now to think there is any practical difference between a big city employer and a small town employer. In the new America every single job - and every single employer - matters.
New Responsibility And New-found Respect
Scan the horizon to see the powerful changes coming. Our country?. . .?our government is entering an age where swift and comprehensive paternal care for "each and all" of its citizens is becoming more fantasy than fact. While superior to any other large country, recent events have shown that our government - regardless of the party in charge - cannot respond to every emergent or long-term need of its citizens, its infrastructure, its environment, its elderly, its neighbors, its enemies, etc. Right or wrong, the job has become too big and it's the nation's employers who have begun to pick up the slack.
It's not just the big headlines that have opened our eyes to the widespread shortfall - there's more to it. A spread-too-thin, underfunded and overstressed government cannot support and protect us in the way in which we had grown accustomed. Moreover, the nature and the scope of the challenges have ballooned, often leaving private employers holding the checkbook. The most compelling examples of government scarcity and the expanding importance of employers include:
- Healthcare - a socialized structure of care for all seems far off and what was once an insurance gap is now a gaping chasm. Smaller firms who bear down, rather than the giant "Try-n-Saves" who clean up, are the heroes holding the mess together.
- Retirement - social security creaks under the future Boomer burden and quietly underfunded pension plans are the next uber-scandal. The boring but solidly stoic 401(k) plan offered by the smaller champions of Main Street USA will ensure that many golden years remain 24 carat.
- Security, Public Health and Recovery - our government takes the lead here but recent years show that it is the more agile smaller organizations that Washington partners with for quick fixes whether it's disaster relief, engineering, vaccine development, specialty tech, etc.
Also clearly requiring the increasing subsidy of our nation's employers are issues like education, research and development, career preparation, trade negotiations and now even space exploration!
The Fraternal Employer
The unwelcome reality is that some of our hopes ("Our credit score stayed high, insurance covered everything!") and even expectations ("What do you mean I can't collect social security until I'm 85?") might be dashed. Government can't play the perfect "Dad" anymore. While smaller businesses may not have the clout to be paternalistic with workers, a "fraternal model" can bridge some of the rips in Father America's safety net.
Can you imagine just how much worse problems like healthcare would be if smaller-scale employers, like yourselves, had not made these massive issues their own? What if, rather than scratching out a way to meet the rising costs, employers had simply bailed out? These honorable employers - for their own sake - might consider reframing things like insurance premiums and 401(k) contributions as "fraternal expenses" or "social investment" because that is truly what they are. Perhaps a second Chart of Accounts that recategorizes your disbursements to better track your "total role in society" will amplify the pride you should be feeling as an employer of your fellow citizens. Things like insurance premiums, social security contributions, charitable contributions, 401(k) expenses or matching contributions, etc. are social investments, and there might come a day when employers say things like "What's the social number there in the Northeast?" and an owner might reply "It's running about 12 percent of sales." They may not be your brothers (or sisters) but they are somebody's family. In tribal settings the person who takes responsibility for all who join is called the Chief.
Capitalism's Unassuming Heroes
There was a time when people would think of certain professions and speak in reverent tones. If someone was a professor, priest or physician - they were said to be answering a calling. That person would be afforded special treatment because there was an open recognition that these people, in these positions, provided for others in a way that we, as business owners and managers, did not. We were more self-centered or at least that was the perception. Now, you can see how untrue that is.
Employer is the next great calling to be recognized and appreciated by the American people.
Those who start a business - with all the accompanying risk - and take on others; employing them; giving them a trade; presenting them with employee rights and then guarding those same rights; giving them a safe place to work; subsidizing their health coverage; contributing to their social security accounts, their disability and unemployment insurances; offering them a portable pension and COBRA coverage; and creating an environment where they have an opportunity to learn, grow, meet life-long friends (and possibly a spouse)?. . .?employers are the new American heroes.
A Gift For The Country
If you still are having trouble elevating your role in this great society, please consider this one question: Who is doing more for the American people than the American employer?
Employers do so much more than provide a paycheck. You are now a supplier of the basic tenets of prosperity and opportunity. From the moment you take on that first person you become something altogether different. A man on a raft alone isn't a very compelling image but add just one person and that raft becomes a lifeboat. In that boat are all of the family members of these two people. Does that sound like a small lifeboat? What if there are five, 10 or 15 people on board with you? Add in their families and there might be close to 100 people counting on that boat and that captain! You've graduated from lifeboat to village.
This is why we do what we do. This is why you try so hard - every cold morning, every rainy Monday, every late night .. every January 2nd. This is why good employers are today's burgeoning heroic class. And this is why you can fight on, stay enthusiastic and continue to build. In the end, there is nothing greater to offer than a job.
About the author:
Chris Traynor, a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), is the Director and Knowledge Scout for Whip-Smart Management Consulting, Wayne, N.J., (www.whip-smart.com) and has 25 years of experience in the solid surface industry as a consultant to fabricators, distributors, manufacturers and associated firms. He can be reached at ctraynor@whip-smart.com.
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