Ruth 2:4 “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, ‘The LORD be with you!’ ‘The LORD bless you!’ they answered.”
This kind of a response indicates a special employer/employee relationship in an agricultural setting.
Principle: Godly employers with responsive employees are probably doing more than meeting fair employment practices.
Christian business owners can be bold and specific about mentioning God if their actions carry out a Christian value system. By and large, employees will be grateful for a workplace that is run by a Godly man in Godly ways. Bring God to work with you. Talk about Him, use His name. Run the company by principles that indicate your respect for Him.
A Christian owner might include some of the following benefits and attribute them to God: free and frequent refreshments for all; no limit on sick days and employees able to stay home to take care of sick family members; nursery care; a fitness center; laundry pick up service; free car washes once a week; medical care such as allergy or flu shots and a wellness program; in-house haircutting; a matching funds program with the employees for charity giving; schooling to advance professional skills; software teaching for commonly used programs; freedom to employees to make important decisions; self-evaluation reviews; work divided up into teams for more accountability; flexible hours; pizza; fun and games periodically; etc. It will depend on your HR budget, size, gross margins and pay scales. But look at the Fortune Small Business Magazine’s list of “The Top 100 Companies to work for” and you’ll find many of these family-friendly features offered by those companies.
Do they translate into profitability and low turn-over rates? Absolutely! Visit SAS Institute Inc on the web. (www.sas.com) and check out their company history. This was the most important software company you never heard of. I believe it is still a company where employees can eat lunch with their kids; everyone gets unlimited sick days, and the gate clangs shut at 6 p.m. with a low turnover rate in an industry where people move around all the time. It’s a very profitable company. All the benefits did not come at the beginning of the company but each year they added to and revised the list. There is no indication that SAS CEO Jim Goodnight is a godly man but he runs a “Boaz”-kind of a company where the employees might start the day with a “God be with you” kind of a greeting.
Discussion:
1. Have you worked in a company where there were some “unique” benefits and what were the results?
2. What are some of the benefits in that bucket of benefits which could add to the productivity of your company?
3. What are the complications of adding unusual benefits like those listed?
