Page 134 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

8

Employees Want

and Need a

Manager Who Cares

ow would you like it if your employees were to wake up
Hevery morning, bounce out of bed, and feel happy and
excited about going to work before they even had their first cup

of coffee? Do you think it’s even possible? That’s exactly what
John Thompson did for 15 years while working in New York
City for a midsize Madison Avenue advertising agency.
“People assumed because I worked on Madison Avenue that
I was pulling in the big bucks, but that couldn’t have been fur-

ther from the truth. I was a copywriter the first few years I was in
New York and, believe me, it’s a competitive business there,”
says Thompson. “Copywriters are a dime a dozen in that city. I
really had to stretch every dollar to live in the city and work in

the business, but it wasn’t the money that made me passionate
about what I did for a living or kept me there all those years. It
was the love of my job and the love and concern that my man-
ager had for all of us in our department.
“What people don’t realize is that employees leave man-
agers, not companies,” Thompson observes. “Believe it or not, I

only left the agency because my manager died. Otherwise, I

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