Compassion Pays - At Last!

I read the following comments by Susan Heron of AIM in the Weekend Australian of 22/23 August(Weekend Professional section)

• Companies need to regard non-salary benefits such as good workplace culture, flexible work arrangements and health/wellbeing programs as competitive weapons in the battle to attract and retain the people their business needs to prosper
• The downturn is having an effect on salaries…non-salary benefits have become the key battleground for employee recruitment and retention…
• The non-salary component of a person’s package or employment conditions becomes critical in the bid to attract and retain the best employees.

My comments:

• We are finally getting closer to the day when employers see employees as more than ‘workplace resources’.
• Money always has been only one (albeit important) part of the employee’s quality of life deal.
• Ever since the industrial age, business has employed the whole person, not simply their role as ‘a workplace resource’.
• Work is only one part of our 24/7 day and of our stress.
• Personal life and personal goals have everything to do with job choices, work productivity and commitment to corporate goals.
  
• We carry all of our emotional baggage 24/7 affecting everything we do at work, home and even at play.
• Just like any other purchase, people ‘buy’ jobs to meet their own needs, and only secondarily to meet the corporate aims of the employer. The sales package has to serve a person’s 24/7 needs and lifetime goals.

I would suggest it’s time to change the expression ‘human resource management’ to one of ‘people investment management’.