By David Creelman

When you hear about companies ruthlessly laying off loyal employees it feels wrong. Yet when you hear about companies saddled with lazy employees who cannot be fired it also feels wrong. When we experience Silicon Valley where bright people flit happily from one company to another, it is easy to think that is the employment model of the future.  Yet a quick look at the rest of the world shows this free and easy style is rarely applicable.

So what do organizations really owe employees? What is a fair employment deal? That was an issue tackled by the Corpus Operis think tank at Schloss Wartin in eastern Germany. The result was the Corpus Operis People Charter.

What a People Charter Needs to Address

Employers need to be encouraged to adopt a fair employment deal because there is an imbalance in power. The employer can afford to lose an employee, but if an employee loses their job it can be devastating. This imbalance in power can lead to abuse of employees. In the 20th century, governments passed innumerable labour laws to protect employees, but these are inflexible and out of date. We need something new.

The Corpus Operis People Charter aims to be a flexible model that looks after the interests of employees while not unduly constraining employers. It is meant to be a model for companies defining their employment deal, and a signal to government about what kind of employee protection is relevant in the 21st century.

The Eight Promises

The People Charter has eight aspirational, but measurable promises:

Termination Promise: Employment is not forever. When it makes sense to end the relationship we will not assess blame. We will handle the process with dignity and ensure the departing employee has an effective parachute.

Capability Promise: Every year you work with us you will develop your ability to contribute to an organization. This is one element of the parachute.

Work-life Promise: We will actively monitor stress levels and enable you to strike a work-life balance that is reasonable for you.

Valued Talent Promise: We will ensure people are treated well and that people treat each other with respect.

Engagement Promise: We will create high levels of engagement.

Good Citizen Promise: We will behave as a good citizen so that people can be proud of the organization. We will enable people to be good citizens.

Diversity Promise: We will actively encourage diversity in gender, ethnicity, culture and personal style so that people can feel free to be themselves in the workplace.

The Transparent Measurement Promise: We will measure how well these promises are being achieved and share the results publicly.

Understanding the Approach

Let’s look at a few of the promises. The first promise deals with the most important issue: people need a soft landing when they are fired. Employers have an obligation to minimize the risk of someone facing a personal disaster. In the case of a high-flying programmer in Silicon Valley the parachute may be nothing more than 24 hours notice and a goodbye party because they know she can get a new job immediately. In the case of a mechanic who has spent his working life learning the specialized equipment of your firm then they will need considerably more support. We can’t prevent hardship; we can’t give that mechanic a job for life or guarantee they will find a job at equivalent pay, but the organization can make sure the employee is in pretty good financial shape and in reasonably good position to find a new job. This does not just mean fat payouts. It means financial education so that the employee does not get stupidly in debt. It means encouraging savings so that the employee has a nest egg. It may mean lobbying the government for new kinds of unemployment insurance. The outcome  that matters is that employees know they are not sitting on a precipice, where the loss of a job would be a disaster. There can be no single standard for what that entails. Companies need to commit to the principle and then strive to achieve that for the particular situation of their employees.

The last promise is critical because it means that the charter is not just nice words. An organization should measure and report on its own People Charter goals and how well it has succeeded at achieving them. For example, the fourth promise relates to engagement.  An organization may decide realistically it can only promise that 50 per cent of employees will be engaged. Fair enough. This, like many of the promises, can be measured in an employee opinion survey. If the organization finds they are falling short of their promises, they should take action.

What To Do

We are immersed in a web of legislation. The People Charter won’t free us from that, but it does provide a great starting point for employers to articulate their own employment deal

David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research, providing writing, research and speaking on human-capital management. He works with a variety of academics, think tanks, consultancies and HR vendors in Canada, the U.S., Japan, Europe and China. Mr. Creelman can be reached at dcreelman@creelmanresearch.com