You want to be generous and flexible with your employees. Why wouldn't you? Everybody is working harder. Everybody is under more pressure. Everybody needs more than what they are getting.
If you are the boss, one of the most important parts of your job is taking care of your people. Remember, people work to take care of themselves and their families. They want your help. Some managers consistently do more for their employees. If you're not one of those managers, what is your problem?
What are the key elements of every job that employees typically care about? Based on more than twenty years of research conducted by my company RainmakerThinking, Inc., including hundreds of thousands of respondents, this is what employees care about:
- The ability to earn more money. This is all about the compensation package. What is the base pay and the value of the benefits? How much of the pay is fixed? How much is contingent on clear performance benchmarks tied directly to concrete actions the individual employee can control? What are the levers for driving the pay up or down?
Most employees have a considerable desire and interest in customizing some or all of these key elements. When you find out what a particular employee really needs or wants from you, it is like finding a needle in a haystack. How do you make those needles work for you as supersonic bargaining chips? Leverage them for everything they are worth to make win-win custom deals whenever you possibly can.
- "You don't want to work on Thursday? I'm glad to know that. Here's what I need from you by Wednesday at midnight."
- "You want your own office? Here's what I need from you."
- "You want to bring your dog to work? Great. Here's what I need from you."
- "You want to have lunch with the senior VP? Here's what I need from you."