What is the real value of those who work for your company? For that matter, what is your real value?

As employers and/or potential employers, it’s our responsibility to evaluate those who work for us. It isn’t by chance that the term “evaluate” is used here, because evaluate means to form an idea for the value of something, or in this case, someone.

We are not talking here about the intrinsic worth every person has as an individual. The value of a human life is not and should not, be measured by what they can do for us or the money they can make for our companies. People intrinsically possess far more worth than that, even if some bosses don’t recognize this fact.

So, the value judgments we’re making here are confined to the realm of the workplace and to the nature of our enterprise, whether it’s a profit or a nonprofit one.

Whenever I sit down to interview prospective employees, I explain the difference between cost and worth. Cost is what the company or organization must pay or do to keep them on the team. There are tangible and intangible costs, just like there is tangible and intangible worth:

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