Editorial: Love in Business

By Margaret Benefiel

Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to reflect on love in business — not the soap opera kind, but a deeper, more solid kind.

We all know the dangers of the soap opera kind of love in the workplace — romantic entanglements deteriorating into sexual harassment suits, ineffectiveness at work, and the breakup of families. But there is an equal and opposite danger – the danger of staying so guarded at work that you never open your heart toward employees, clients, and customers.

We have seen too much of this lack of open-heartedness in business in the past six months. When executives receive bailout money and then use it on themselves while at the same time laying off workers and refusing to extend credit to customers, they display a singular hard-heartedness. When they use taxpayers’ money to buy corporate jets or spend millions on office renovations, they demonstrate a dire dearth of compassion.

What might love in business look like in these economic times? Perhaps business leaders could take inspiration from a compassionate approach taken by CoreStates Bank in Philadelphia in the mid-nineties.

When Gus Tolson, director of Human Resources, and the company’s CEO were informed that a decision had been made to lay off a thousand workers in the course of a merger, they faced a tough challenge: how could they exercise compassion in the midst of a layoff? Throughout his career in HR in various companies, Gus had insisted on considering not only the business impact of every decision, but also the decision’’s impact on people. Furthermore, he had always insisted that leaders communicate with people in a way that would maintain their decency and integrity.

So when the merger and layoffs came along, Gus worked with the CEO to design CoreSearch, an internal training program for people in transition. Employees were informed early on about the merger and downsizing, and through CoreSearch, they were offered six months of training while still on salary in order to help place them in new positions. For six months, employees came to work every day and worked on developing new skills. They received training and worked temporarily in other parts of the business to gain expertise in new areas.

In designing CoreSearch, Gus consulted with external search firms to understand the psyche of a person in transition – a person who’s been told that his job is ending, that he must find a new job with the company’s help. The company wanted to create an environment in which people could feel good about themselves in the midst of their transitions. The process was designed around the person’s needs rather than those of the company. “It would have been really easy for us to take the shortcut and not really think about the person, but just the organization,” Gus reflected. But the company didn’t take the shortcut. Based on what he had learned, Gus provided employees with office space and told them, “You’re still going to have a place that you can call your own. We want you to put pictures up there and make it yours. You’re still going to get a paycheck. You’re going to continue to report to work.”

In the end, the program boasted a placement rate of 84 percent and cost the company a few million dollars, a few million dollars spent on people rather than on a corporate jet or an office renovation. Because of Gus’s commitment to developing people, shared by the company’s CEO, a merger that could have spelled tragedy for many people became an opportunity for employees to learn new skills and to move forward into fulfilling work. Furthermore, the company became known for its integrity and compassion, a reputation worth millions more than the few million invested in the program.

This Valentine’s Day, may business leaders take inspiration from the CoreSearch program and reflect on how to exercise love and compassion in these tough times. Doing so will not only help their employees, it will also gain them respect and improve their reputation in a business world that is desperate for role models in this uncharted territory in which it finds itself.

From “The Soul of a Leader” (Crossroad, 2008). Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D., is CEO and Founder of ExecutiveSoul.com.She is the niece of Anita Boldman of Orcas Island.