Treating Employees Well

I have had very few employees in my businesses, mostly just partners, so I’m not sure how I’d handle most issues, but I have worked for lots of people and seen relations between an employer and employee handled great, good, fair, and poorly. Unfortunately the latter seems to dominate.

I found this post from Reed Hastings on setting employees free very interesting. The idea that you value work, that you want employees to be happy and excited is a great one. In small companies, I can see this working well, and helping the company to grow and people to bond.

One thing in the post that strikes me as a better deal is the idea of compensating employees fairly now. Don’t do vesting, don’t do delayed compensation. Pay people a fair wage, and give them outright option or stock grants when appropriate, and vest them immediately. Delaying the grants makes it seem like you really don’t want to give them out, and you’re basing the reception on time, not work done. Not the message you want to send if you want motivated people.

I don’t know how well it scales, but it would be nice to see how a larger company could implement some of these ideas, and perhaps build a better culture.