Olivia hadn’t expected to work so often and so closely with the company’s owner. The company’s manager had first accepted her as an intern at the end of her education program and then hired her on when the internship ended. Olivia worked mostly for the senior employees, fetching things, organizing things, and cleaning up during the course of projects. The company’s owner was mostly out soliciting clients. But often, the owner would stop in to check on the course of projects. When the owner did, the owner seemed to make a point of calling Olivia over to ask Olivia’s opinions on things. Soon, the owner had Olivia doing small projects for the owner directly, like the senior employees. Olivia loved the responsibility. She appreciated even more the owner’s confidence and kindness.
Ownership
Depending on the size and nature of the organization for which you work, it may surprise you that you could have an important relationship with your employing company’s owner or owners. Your relationships with co-workers and supervisors are important. They help you get your work done and integrate your work into the overall workplace operation. But owners play a role in a company’s success, too. And that role may include communicating the company’s mission, values, priorities, and culture not just to executives and managers but also to line workers. Your relationship with your company’s owner or owners may also influence your retention, assignments, and advancement. Your role is not to curry favor with owners, especially if doing so involves going around supervisors, managers, or executives. But an owner’s natural respect and appreciation for you, your character, and your work may lead to opportunities that lead to greater job success. Be cognizant of your relationship to owners.
Proprietors
Sole proprietors of their own business are naturally more involved with their employees than owners of corporate entities may be. A sole proprietorship has no owners other than the one who generally runs the business. Businesses incorporate when reaching any significant size, for multiple good reasons. Yet many small-business founders will continue to operate without a corporate entity or will adopt the form of a single-member limited-liability company (LLC), which is effectively a sole proprietorship. If you work for a sole proprietorship or LLC, you probably work alongside, or with regular contact with, the founder and owner. In that case, everything the prior chapter said about getting along with your supervisor applies equally to your relationship with the owner. But you should also appreciate the owner’s direct concern with preserving and increasing the value of the business. Many small business owners don’t take a regular salary or they minimize the salary they take, not just for tax reasons but also to pour the excess back into building the business. Respect your sole proprietor’s commitment to and interest in the business. Point your work activities to supporting the owner’s interest, and you’ll have your proprietor’s favor for job success. You might even have an opportunity some day to share in ownership.
Partners
As sole proprietorships grow, they may take the form of partnerships. Partnerships involve the association of two or more under an agreement recognizing their ownership interests in the business. Partnerships may be as small as two or three partners or as large as several hundred partners. Partnerships, or professional limited-liability companies having a similar partnership form, tend to be the preferred or required form in law, accounting, medicine, counseling, and other traditional professions, restricting ownership to licensed professionals in the same profession. If you’re not a lawyer, you won’t own part of a law firm. Similarly, if you’re not an accountant, you may not own part of an accounting firm. Keep in mind that if you are working for a partner, you are working for your employing company’s owner, who has all the authority, responsibility, and interest of an owner. When communicating with the partner, treat your work not just as your employment but as an act of stewardship of the partner’s ownership interest. For instance, don’t waste supplies, needlessly incur expenses, or lazily turn away profitable work. Show to the partner your commitment to preserving and increasing the value of the partner’s ownership interest. Doing so will earn you the partner’s respect and favor.
Corporations
If you work for a for-profit corporate entity, you should recognize and respect that the entity still has owners and owner representatives. Some employees working for a corporation forget that the corporation has owners who have interests, often substantial or critical, in the corporation increasing its value and earnings. If, for instance, you work for a closely held family corporation, the family’s members may depend for their livelihood on the corporation’s earnings. They may also expect to hand down the corporation to children or other heirs for their employment or support. Even publicly traded corporations have owners with significant financial stakes in the corporation. As a corporate employee, you should share with your co-workers an abiding concern for the needs and preferences of the corporation’s customers or clients. Yet you should also be aware of the owners’ interests in the corporation’s continuity, profitability, and increase in value, especially in your communications with owner representatives. Respect corporate ownership, and you’ll gain a degree of confidence and security from owner representatives.
Executives
Corporate employers operate through their executives and managers, who are the shareholder owners’ representatives. In larger corporations, executives may include a president and chief executive officer (CEO), treasurer and chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer (COO), and subordinate vice presidents for such functions as legal affairs, design, facilities, marketing, operations, and human resources. Those executives may depend on subordinate directors, managers, and supervisors to carry out corporate initiatives. Understand the corporate hierarchy in your workplace. Make a point of being able to name and identify the individuals who stand in the chain of command or hierarchy of authority above you, so that you do not overlook their communications to you, their presence in your workplace, and their observations of your work. Your supervisor may, for instance, deeply appreciate it if you recognize, and treat with appropriate deference and respect, your supervisor’s director or other manager or executive, when your supervisor is showing them around your workplace. You may also at times have those higher-ups call on you to provide information or perform a task, in your supervisor’s absence. You’d surely want to impress, or at least not ignore and offend, your boss’s boss.
Boards
Corporate entities also have boards of directors. A board of directors represents the corporation’s shareholders, governing the corporation for shareholder benefit. Typically, shareholders elect directors. Directors may include large shareholders. Directors may also include representatives of banks lending the corporation funds, private financiers providing credit, founders of the corporation, and other corporations with which your employing corporation does substantial business. As a corporate employee, you may have no contact with the corporation’s board members. Indeed, boards generally avoid communicating with workers other than through the corporation’s executives and managers. But corporate boards may also have audit, risk-management, and similar oversight committees that the board empowers to investigate corporate affairs directly with subordinate employees. You may in that vein receive a board or committee communication asking that you respond with certain information. Do so timely and diligently. Consult your supervisor or the company’s personnel department if you have any question over the appropriateness of the inquiry or of your response. Don’t ignore or botch a board or committee inquiry. Doing so may hurt the company, your supervisor, and your job prospects.
Whistleblowing
Employees sometimes initiate direct communications with board members or board committees appointed to receive complaints over corporate activities. Generally, if you have any concern over the safety, ethics, or legality of the corporation’s activities, you should immediately report those concerns to your supervisor. If, however, your supervisor fails or refuses to take appropriate action, and the unsafe, unethical, or illegal activity persists, you may have the obligation to advance your complaint up the line of hierarchy, first to your supervisor’s manager, then to the company executive, then to the board, and finally to outside government regulators if no one corrects the activity. The law calls whistleblowing this reporting up the chain of command of a suspected violation of law, rule, or regulation. The point of whistleblowing isn’t just to be a self-policing do-gooder. The point is also to preserve shareholder value, where illegal activity could crush the company with fines and lost reputation. State and federal laws generally protect whistleblowers from corporate retaliation, for reports made in good faith of suspected law violations. Whistleblowers may run the risk of losing all favor from the superiors around whom they go to get the corporation to stop law violations, even if whistleblowers do have legal protection. But far better to be an honest whistleblower than part of a dishonest coverup of illegal activity.
Shareholders
If you work for a corporate entity of any size, especially a publicly traded company, then you may not have any contact with the entity’s shareholder owners. Publicly traded companies can have thousands of shareholders. Yet in your work, you should still respect the interests of those shareholder owners. Yes, pay attention to your supervisor and the company’s managers. Do your best for the company’s customers or clients. But know, too, that your work is contributing to the valuable interests shareholders have in the company. Your employer’s shareholders may depend on dividends and on regular increases in share values for their own income and support. Consider the financial harm that happens to shareholders losing fortunes in the sudden and terribly unfortunate collapse of previously profitable and growing corporations that have long attracted wise investors. Companies curate their employee culture to build employee respect for shareholders and shareholder value, even granting stock or stock options to employees and promoting employee stock-ownership plans (ESOPs) to build employee commitment and engagement. You show your commitment to your employer’s mission when you understand and respect the interests of shareholder owners. Get on board with shareholder interests, and your supervisors and managers will respect you.
Public
Even if you work for a nonprofit corporation, qualified under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) as a tax-exempt charitable organization, your employer has owners of a sort. Charitable organizations include not only traditional charities like a Goodwill or Salvation Army store, American Red Cross, or Humane Society, but also private colleges and universities, churches and other religious organizations, recreational and community organizations, and a host of other nonprofit entities. The U.S. charitable sector employs over 12 million workers. Charitable nonprofits are generally corporate entities with executives, managers, and boards. Charitable nonprofits do not have shareholders, though. Instead, the public is the putative owner of charitable entities, the boards of which manage the entities in public trust. When you work for a charitable organization, you work for public benefit, not for any private individual or shareholder. Of course, as you work for your charitable employer, follow your supervisor’s directions, and focus on the needs of the individuals or groups whom your employer serves. But know, too, that you are working for public benefit, and value that public interest. Your public-mindedness should resonate well among your employer’s supervisors, managers, executives, and directors.
Reflection
Identify the form of organization for which you work, among the forms listed above. How many owners does your employer have, and who are they? Would you recognize your employer’s owners if they were to walk through your workplace? Do you work directly for or with one of your employer’s owners, whether a proprietor, partner, or significant shareholder? If so, how, if at all, do you recognize and respect their ownership interest in the way that you do or communicate about your work when around them? Do you think they appreciate your work attitude as preserving and promoting the value of their ownership interest? Can they see that you appreciate their ownership of and investment in your employer’s business? Identify the chain of command you would follow through your company and to its outside regulator, if you saw your company conducting illegal activity that could destroy its reputation and value. If, instead of a for-profit corporation, you work for a nonprofit charitable organization, articulate the interest the public has in your work for the organization. How does your work promote public benefit?
Key Points
You are ultimately responsible to company owners for your work.
Respect company value and growth when working with a proprietor.
Respect partnership value when working with or for a partner.
Ultimate accountability is to shareholders if working for a corporation.
Corporate executives and managers pursue shareholder interests.
Corporate boards represent shareholder owner interests.
Whistleblowers protect shareholder value by reporting illegal conduct.
Charitable organizations act in the public’s interest, in public trust.