88% of Employees Think You Don’t Care
At Innovative Outsourcing we spend our days helping business owners take better care of their people. So when a conversation comes along that says it better than we ever could, we pass it on. This one left a real mark on me, and it will change how I manage my own team — and I read and listen to this kind of thing every day.
We all know Simon Sinek. You may not know Bob Chapman. Chapman was the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and wrote a book called Everybody Matters. After hearing this interview, I bought it.
Here's the number that frames the whole thing. Chapman says 88% of people feel they work for an organization that doesn't care about them, and three out of four are disengaged at work. He points to Stanford research — Jeffrey Pfeffer's Dying for a Paycheck — estimating that 120,000 people a year die from work-related stress.
Sit with that for a second. How you lead isn't only a business issue. It's a health issue.
Three ideas from the episode have stayed with me.
1. Everyone Who Works for You Is Somebody's Precious Child
I know how that sounds. Stay with me.
Chapman describes the moment his whole view of leadership flipped. At a wedding, watching two young people start their life together, it hit him that every one of his 12,000 team members is somebody's child — handed into his care for 40 hours a week.
> "The way we see people affects the way we treat people." — Bob Chapman
See an employee as labor, a headcount, or a line item, and it's easy to treat them as replaceable. See them as someone's kid, placed in your care, and everything about how you lead changes.
For a small business owner, that isn't a soft idea. It's the difference between managing a roster and leading actual human beings.
2. Your Leadership Follows Them Home
This is the part that hit hardest.
Chapman's company built a class to teach employees how to listen better at work. 95% of the feedback had nothing to do with work — it was about how the skill improved people's marriages and their relationships with their kids.
Follow the chain. Someone spends 40 hours a week feeling unseen and stressed. That stress doesn't clock out at 5pm. It rides home as a short temper, lost sleep, less patience with a spouse and children. As Chapman puts it, we've built a prosperous economy, but not a healthy one.
Now flip it. His goal is to send people home with the energy to be better parents and better partners than when they walked in. A good boss can genuinely make someone a better spouse and a better parent.
How many owners have ever thought of that as part of the job?
3. Caring Isn't Soft. It's the Best Business Strategy There Is.
For every leader who files this under "nice, but not practical," Chapman has the receipts. Barry-Wehmiller grew its share price roughly 12% compounded for 25 years. When orders fell 30% in the 2008-09 downturn, the company chose shared sacrifice over layoffs — because, in his words, layoffs mean your business model failed.
His language gives it away. His company doesn't track headcounts. It tracks heart counts.
And his challenge to cynical executives is impossible to unhear:
> "I don't need to justify caring. How do you justify not caring?" — Bob Chapman
He goes one step further: the greatest act of charity isn't the check you write to a good cause. It's how you treat the people you have the privilege of leading.
Give It a Listen
I could keep quoting it, but you should hear it in his own voice. Set aside 45 minutes for the Simon Sinek and Bob Chapman conversation.
Whether you lead two people or two hundred, it will change how you think about the responsibility that rides along with every paycheck you sign.
And if it leaves you wondering how to build that kind of people-first culture in your own company, that's exactly what we do. Grab a free 30-minute session with one of our HR experts.