A Missed Opportunity

Given the chance to boost employee morale, to reinforce the kind of messages that help build a cohesive organization, what kind of company would pass it up?

It's hard to imagine that any organization – especially in these trying times – wouldn’t want to maximize every opportunity to lift people's spirits and make them feel a part of something larger than themselves.

So it struck me as absolutely tone-deaf and (dare I say?) stupid when I actually observed a company that missed the opportunity – big time.

Escorted into the lobby of the headquarters of a multi-national corporation, a potential client, I was heartened and pleasantly surprised to see a wall of black and white photos of people: office workers, blue-collar workers and executives in various poses related to the work they do.

I recognized the CEO and commented aloud to my companion – the prospective client liaison – what a great idea it is to post all those employee photos. It reinforced the sense of community that helps define a corporation and its mission. I imagined myself an employee coming into work every morning, feeling a sense of pride at seeing the photo of myself alongside my fellow workers. "What a terrific idea," I said aloud.

So imagine my shock and surprise when she said that all but the handful of executives were in fact models, not real employees of the company.

Whoa. Check please.

Talk about a missed opportunity. Talk about a self-inflicted fatal wound.

Not only would a wall of employee photos be a real morale booster and enhance people's connectedness to the organization, but the company's failure to do so – and in such a blatant fashion – had the complete opposite effect. Were I an employee there, the knowledge and daily reminder of seeing a wall of photos of models pretending to be real employees would be a daily slap in the face. It would tell me that employees are replaceable by anonymous models and therefore not essential to the organization or its mission.

What possibly could have been the motivation? Cost saving? Was it really cheaper to hire dozens of models and take professional photos? Not likely.

In the delicate dance with a prospective client, I handled the topic carefully. Fortunately, she agreed with me and, in fact, felt herself insulted just as I would have had I worked there.

The experience revealed volumes about this organization and the people who ran it. But it also spoke to the broader issue of engaging employees in the organization and its mission.

As I wrote in the previous entry here, businesses are at their heart communities of humans. Anything that enhances that community, that builds people’s sense of connection to the greater whole, is going to redound to the benefit of the corporation.

Connecting employees to the corporation can take many forms, and the more methods employed, the better. Frequent face-to-face meetings, executive visibility and availability, communications in numerous venues and such all add up to a better-informed and better-connected employee population, employees who are engaged in the long- and short-term goals of the organization.

Envision a company that does all that and how well a wall of employee photos would be received, and how natural the addition of such photos would be.

Now, imagine the opposite. Without revealing the name of the company, I can assure you that it is now in dire financial straits – five years after my having seen those photos in the lobby. In my own mind, I see a direct connection between its current situation and that wall of photos. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity.