You have a good situation and your people are well. But the rule remains the same.
If one of the secretary's husbands get cancer of the ass and your insurance doesn't cover it, and you happen to leave 250k in petty cash, and the whole place is the honor system, there is a more than zero % chance a secreatary will swipe from petty cash to get her man's back pussy replaced.
You can be a great HR guy, but the reason they show up isn't because they love you. They show up because they like the $ and accept the opportunity cost tradeoff of their time for that money. period. Enjoy the hugs, be there for each other, yank each other off at the company pow wow. That'd be super. but they show up because of the money and acceptable conditions. if they won the lottery tomorrow, you'd have an empty office on Monday morning. If any one of them had risk to life, limb, family, or pet, and you were vulnerable, they're gonna take. it's human nature, and it's naive to believe people are "naturally good and can be trusted" without looking at situations.
No prudent business leaves $250,000 in petty cash lying around the office. That's really an unrealistic hypothetical.
And this makes no sense either: people are "naturally good and can be trusted" without looking at situations. No prudent business operates this way.
I think you probably need to manage a business with employees before you can have an insight on how to manage employees (or a business with employees). Don't you agree?
The key, like I said earlier, is this: "But if you do your homework and are a good manager, you will hire, train, develop, and trust excellent and loyal employees."
I just finished a book by John C. Maxwell called "Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know." Here is an excerpt on trusting employees:
Victorian writer George MacDonald said, "To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved." The Law of Solid Ground in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership states that trust is the foundation of leadership. While that is true, it can also be said that trust is the foundation of all good relationships, and good friendships all require trust. If you don't have trust, there can be no open and honest interaction, and the relationship will only be temporary.
Manchester, Inc., a consulting firm in Philadelphia, used a survey of more than two hundred companies to discover the best ways to build trust with employees. They found that people who engender trust . . .
- Maintain integrity.
- Openly communicate visions and values.
- Show respect for employees as equal partners.
- Focus on shared goals rather than personal agendas.
- Do the right thing regardless of personal risk.
- Listen with an open mind.
- Demonstrate compassion.
- Maintain confidences.
While you cannot control whether people give you their trust, you can control your actions toward them. And you can determine to give them
your trust. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson remarked, "The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is by trusting him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."
It takes a leap of faith to put your trust in another person, especially someone you don't know well. Yet that's what it takes to practice the Golden Rule. As you strive to invest confidence in others in the same way you would like it invested in you, take comfort in the words of Camillo Benso di Cavour, who said, "The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them."
Ethics 101 at 32-33.