“Treat others as you would like them to treat you.”
Luke 6:31 The Jerusalem Bible –
The longest shutdown in government history has left me thoroughly disgusted with the attitude of the politicians who are totally out of touch with the untold millions of Americans who live from paycheck to paycheck.
These days we tend to hear a great deal about Income inequality, but not so much about the management’s attitude in firms that have made conscious decisions to change that formula for their employees. Some of those are small firms while others have hundreds or thousands of employees. 
One of the biggest is the giant Publix supermarket chain. In 2016 they had 1,112 locations and more than 175,000 employees. The owner put 80% of the company stock in trust for the employees. Warren Cassell, Jr. reported in a 2016 article that now, “all Publix workers, regardless of their position in the company, receive 8.5% of their annual salary in the form of company stock after they have been with the company for more than 12 months and put in more than 1,000 hours of work.”
Fortune reporter Christopher Tkaczyk, who worked for five days at one of Publix’s Florida stores, said his co-workers were “pleased-as-punch, over-the-moon, (and) ridiculously contented.”
Other companies that share the wealth do so with a stock plan that vests when the company is sold or goes public. Heaven only knows how many companies there are like that in America, but however many it is, it isn’t enough.
Employee turnover is one of the most expensive, frustrating and time-consuming problems employers face. Large or small, companies that institute shareholder plans for their employees discover when they do that turnover drops to low levels while productivity goes up. They may also discover the value of older employees because of their experience and stability.
Sometimes I find myself writing about a specific financial topic without knowing why. If you are a business owner of any size, perhaps this column has something in it that you need to focus on.
Blessings on your efforts to treat your employees as you would like to be treated,
Judy Osgood