Pay Them On Time

How do you attract and keep good employees? Give them challenging jobs with real chances to grow. Offer attractive benefits, daycare center, health insurance and gourmet cafeterias. Give competitive-to-high salary/extras packages. Provide quality training. Pay them on time.

Pay them on time? Not an answer on any OECD country's Top Ten list, but crucial to Dick and Acme in India and elsewhere. Probably the biggest concern Dick has--so he thinks--are the size twins, scalability and capacity. "Sure, " I say, "but having that is the dream: how you get there is the reality you have to pay attention to."

Dick needs to attract and keep good employees. Fine. So does every other CEO: It's in the job description. Two problems: managers may define "good" differently and cultures can have quite different motivational hot buttons to press. Pay on time fits into number two. (I'll look at what "good" tomorrow ... or soon anyway.)

This thread began with Dick describing how "crowded" the office has become. He spent last week and this merrily interviewing and hiring, interviewing and hiring, so now, well, in Dick's own words.

We had a conference room, which is nice [to have], but now that is full. That's okay. But my old office, it's now full too and that is hard: I have no place to think. It is becoming quite crowded.

Don't know about you, but I get mental pictures of a sweatshop somewhere, not in color but in sepia and shadow. I asked if such "crowded" conditions would affect employee retention if not recruitment, he said no, that

It wasn't that bad by Indian standards, everyone had their own desk, and a PC that worked. And we pay them on time.

Oh, a desk, PC that works and regular pay: why didn't I think of that? Easy. Because I am from a rich, first world culture.

We from the West (or Japan, or 3 out of 4 Chinas) take regular pay and a working PC for granted, and if not hoteling, a desk as well. These are near the bottom of a business Maslow pyramid, above absolute necessities as heat, light and oxygen but below benefits, training or daycare.

If only the rest of the global pie was the same as the rich crust of first-world cultures. It is not, and thinking it is, because more comfortable and, well, correct, is dreaming, not reality.

Western managers, no matter rank, area or enterprise, must pay attention to other sets of rules, other levels on the needs pyramid.

Dick is lucky; he already knows this as well as I do. I offer this post as a brief introduction to the cautionary tale to follow, that unless you open your eyes to how others see things you go broke. Waste money anyway. Guaranteed.