I grew up hearing this phrase: “The Customer is the King”. As an employer I am equally guilty on several accounts for emphasizing the importance of the customer over my employees. We have all done it. We show up at work in the morning and the first thing we ask our early employee is not how their family is doing but whether they were able to make that call.  Granted, customers are the life of our businesses, yours included. But I would like to say that if customers are the life of the business, your people, a.k.a employees, are the blood of your business. Employees are equally as important as your customers and they disserve to be treated with utmost respect. Everything rises and falls with them. They are the face of your business and how they feel inside determines how they represent you and what you stand for.

I remember one time walking into a store to buy a gadget. I paid full price for the gadget and needed a few accessories for it. I asked the girl at the counter if she could recommend an accessory for me from the rack right beside her desk. She looked at me in the eye and said, “You don’t want to buy those. There are better ones online. Try EBay first and if you don’t get a good one…..” and she launched into a list of other businesses that are in direct competition with her business. I looked and knew right away that this girl was not satisfied with her present company. Employees do this every day. They recommend your competition to clients who walk into your business. You spend thousands of dollars advertising to bring customers in but your worst competition, surprising enough, is not the store next door. It’s your unsatisfied employee.

Stories such as the one above make me believe that the employee might actually be more important than your most valued customer.  As such, employee satisfaction should be up there on the list of priorities, one step ahead of customer satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is more than just the paycheck you write every month or every other week. Matter of fact, research has found that pay is not the primary reason why employees enjoy what they do. Most employees value work environment, the attitude of their boss, etc, to be more important than the money they receive. If money is the reward for labor, caring for your employees is the reward for being human.