Human Resources
Building people
How to empower your employees and make them feel appreciated
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Dallas | July 2008
Page 1 of 2
Kathryn Rehm Hisaw
president, Hisaw & Associates
An employee at Hisaw &
Associates drops his wrinkled dollar bill into the pot and
then timidly steps on to the
scale to see if he’s lost any
weight in the last week. He
sees that he’s lost another 2
pounds since the last weigh-in,
smiles and steps off.
It’s not some company policy
requires employees to be a
certain weight; rather, it’s a
corporate challenge, based on
the hit TV show “The Biggest
Loser,” to encourage employees to be active and healthy. At
the end of the challenge, whoever has lost the most weight
gets all the money.
It’s just one initiative that
President Kathryn Rehm Hisaw
says has made a difference at
the general contracting company. By encouraging and
rewarding employees, she
strives to make all 40 of them
feel like family at Hisaw, which
posted 2007 revenue of $120 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Rehm Hisaw about how providing employee incentives,
such as a trip to Las Vegas,
makes people feel appreciated.
Get buy-in. It’s important to
listen to people and hear
what people have to say and
be open. A lot of times,
companies are not open to
change and not open to listening to people in their
own organizations.
Let’s say it’s [an idea] in the
accounting department. We
discuss it in the accounting
department at our weekly
meeting, and we get the pros
and cons, and I or [CEO]
Richard Hisaw will ultimately
make that decision. We don’t
come out and say, ‘This is a
new policy for Hisaw.’ We
say, ‘Debbie has made this
suggestion, and we think it’s a
good policy, and we’ll try it.’
That gives people a self-worth of being part of the
company and part of the
team. People hate change.
[But] if people feel they’re
going to derive a better life,
or something will make their
work life better, that they’re
going to become an intricate
part of a company they’re
proud of, they’ll change.
That’s part of just being a
team. If they’re not going to do
that upon knowing that, then
they’re never going to change
and never be part of the team.
Give people authority. One of the toughest things for people to
do is delegate that power
away from them. People are
frightened to do that.
If they start working with
someone that’s going to be
their protégé, and you take
them as if they are your protégé, and you give them bits
and pieces, and you test
them, what also happens is
you’re empowering them and
giving them ability to make
their own decisions. You’re
giving them the ability, and
they know that you trust
them enough to make those
decisions. Without that trust,
they’re not going to be happy.
It almost allows them to
feel they’re in a laissez faire
leadership themselves
because they feel they can
be a leader for other people.
I don’t care how small the
job may seem to a person
from the outside looking in,
every job we have is an intricate part, and nobody is
insignificant. Everybody is a
pertinent part of the machine
that keeps us working.
