By Michael Orwick

I love teaching business students because most of them have ‘that’ mind-set.  You know the one.  They have an inherent understanding of “you get what you pay for”.  They know that to get a good training system, you will have to pay for it.  They recognize that to keep the best workers, you have to pay for them.  This mind-set serves them well as they plough through the various textbooks and create outstanding projects for their course work.  Then it hits a wall.

It is really common in my human resource classes that students examine the concepts and see them as close to “truths” as possible.  Treat your employees well and they will treat your customers well.  Give employees the power to do their best work and you will get their best work.  But then, someone puts up their hand and says: “They don’t do this at my work.  Why?”  Why, indeed.

Why do so many companies study the HR practices of companies like WestJet, Google, and 3M, then turn around and ignore the basic model?  WestJet’s commitment to its employees is remarkable.  A friend of mine works for WestJet.  I asked him if the WestJet he sees is anything like the WestJet we read about in textbooks.  He said, “No, I think it’s better.  The words on a page can’t possibly describe the reality of working for a company that is committed to its people.”

He went on to tell me that, like WestJet, other companies he has worked for had intranets where workers could post questions and comments so they could receive answers from management.  But the questions were different at WestJet.  Instead of questions such as “Why don’t we get time off for family events?” he says they get questions like “Has anyone done an analysis to see if it is more efficient to handle the baggage as a group or as individual pieces?”  These questions were about how to make the company better and more efficient.

It is that attitude that creates the customer-driven atmosphere.   And that creates the demand for the product.  And that creates profit margins that are way higher than industry averages.   So, back to my students: If we know that there are models out there that work so well, why do we not use them?  The only answer I have is, “I don’t’ know.”

It costs money to treat your employees this way and that is often all we see.  Can we remember that the money you spend in developing, delivering, and maintaining these employee models comes back many times over through customer loyalty that is driven by the way the workers treated the customers.  If first-year business students can understand it, why is it so hard for the rest of us?

Michael Orwick, MBA, is a professor at the Okanagan School of Business at Okanagan College and a part-time management consultant.  He is a member of BC HRMA in Kelowna and has been teaching management, marketing, and human resource classes for almost 10 years.  Formerly a broadcaster, his personal experience includes both unionized and non-unionized environments.