Doing Business With Companies That Treat Employees Well

A Business Window with Posters - Cash Only

In my years of watching, observing, and talking to clients and in my many years of research and development of retail in-person experience designs, I have seen that how employees as well customers are treated has an outsized effect on business results. How employees are treated can have an especially large effect on client retention. In my professional life, allowing clients and visitors to see more of who we are, what we do, where and how we work, and keeping all of that authentic has been a core principle of my work of the last decade.

We all want to do businesses with companies that share our core values. In some cases that is not always possible, but the more we allow others to see our core values in action, the more we have potential for growth. Of course that assumes that as a business, a charity, or just a group working together all are treated well, and all get along and work well together. People can tell not only how authentic your organization is, but also how it treats all others. That is something that is innate in all humans. We use this ability more then we know in our everyday life.

Joe McKendrick and Andy Thurai called it a sixth sense on the part of consumers in a 2023 HBR article. We all have this sixth sense, and we all use it daily. They explain it this way, when a consumer is connecting with a company in anyway, whether to buy a product, ask for service help, visit a factory floor or office space, "one can intuitively sense the environment of that company." They go on to show that consumers can quickly "tell whether it’s an inspiring and innovative place to work and cares about its customers and community, or is a terrible place to work that doesn’t respect customers and has a stagnant corporate culture."

Have you had made any decisions as a consumer after seeing how a company treats its own employees?