Prioritizing People Over Profits
You’ve probably heard about the CEO who fired 900 employees over Zoom right? (And did you love the irony of his company being named Better.com? We did.)
For many, this story was newsworthy because of how they were laid off, but to us at Sparent, the more distressing (though not really shocking) issue was WHY they were let go. Better.com offered a few excuses about lack of productivity, but also admitted that the bottom line was that they needed to improve their bottom line. Fast.
Unfortunately, Better.com is not unique in attacking their labor pool to prop up a lagging balance sheet. For most businesses (Sparent included) labor is the single biggest non-fixed expense, and so it makes sense that if you want to improve your profit margins, that’s the obvious place to cut, right?
WRONG.
Don’t Solve Long-Term Problems with Short-Term Solutions
Slashing labor costs to improve revenue reports is a lazy strategy to a complex problem and a classic example of short term thinking with long term consequences.
Employees (or subcontractors or whoever makes up your team) are the resource that generates your revenue. And in return, your company provides them with income to support themselves and their families. Gutting your labor force to save money erodes worker loyalty as well as the foundations of your business. Viewing employees as disposable resources is not only bad business, it’s bad ethics.
Not All Profit Is Created Equal
So let’s agree to stop seeing people as disposable, and instead commit to building strong, sustainable companies that value their teams and prioritize ethical profits AND wages while fostering a positive, inclusive culture based on their core values. Let’s agree that CEO compensation should not be 351 times that of a typical worker.
The Great Resignation should come as no surprise to those companies who have prioritized their profits over people, shunned the contributions of a diverse workforce, let sexism and racism reign, marginalized working mothers, and demanded corporate allegiance at the expense of their employees’ well being, all in exchange for a paycheck. The only thing shocking about the Great Resignation is that it didn’t happen sooner.
We are incredibly fortunate at Sparent to work with women founders who are building companies with impressive missions, intentional cultures, and ethical operations. They are profitable. They are all growing. They are the future and the future is now.
That’s the point—you can be profitable and compassionate. In fact, we argue that the companies who understand that people come first - and embrace a culture that leaves patriarchal paradigms in the rearview mirror - will be the ones that thrive. At Sparent, we are more than happy to be a little less profitable so we can have a business consistent with our core values.
Our Foundation For Building A People-First Company
Everyone Has To Win is a pillar of our Core Values. This means our Sparent team has to win, our clients have to win, and Sparent the company has to win in every aspect of our business. Our Core Values provide us with a litmus test for all of our business decisions and keep us on brand and on mission. They are also the catalyst for the culture we want to create for our amazing team. So empowering!
Efficient, replicable systems ensure that your day-to-day operations can scale.
Documenting our systems in Standard Operating Procedures makes them delegation-ready for our team so we can fire ourselves from daily operations and focus on business development.
We have a delegation strategy in place so that as our business grows and evolves. We can continue to delegate more client- facing operations to our team which provides them with more opportunities with our company while we stay focused on business development.
Building our business in a meaningful way could not have happened without CEO Days. Our commitment to weekly, dedicated time to work ON our business has been pivotal to our growth and development. CEO Days have been so important to our business growth, we now offer CEO Training Days for business owners who want to learn how to structure time to work ON their business.