PEOPLE are our greatest asset. Have you heard that one before? Attracting and retaining talented people is always a challenge. This column continues identifying the factors you need to manage to demonstrate to your people that they really are your greatest asset. Getting these right will also help you attract and retain the best people. This week we look at health and satisfaction. Run your business or organisation through this checklist and answer these three questions: What needs to happen? What could we do better? What do we need to lead and manage better? Health • You have identified all routine activities or environmental aspects that can impact on the health of your people and protective actions are implemented. • Facilities/practices protect the health of your people in terms of clean air, contact with toxic substances, posture, excessive lifting, strained eyesight or hearing, ergonomics. • Prior to embarking on nonroutine activities, the potential health risks are evaluated and protective actions are incorporated into the work practices. • You hold sessions on living a healthy lifestyle including: stress management; dietary issues; exercise; medical check-ups; and drug and alcohol education. • Records are analysed to identify trends in the health status of your people and take remedial action. • You encourage and acknowledge people who identify potential health hazards. • People are encouraged to balance work and other life aspects. Satisfaction • You review the key factors that affect your employees’ well-being, satisfaction, and motivation to initiate improvements. • You measure employee retention, absenteeism, grievances, safety incidents, and productivity to assess and improve employee well-being, satisfaction, and motivation. • Salary, benefits and work conditions for all levels are benchmarked annually against industry/organisational norms and awards to maintain your competitive status. • Altruistic policies and practices assist employees in situations of genuine sickness, personal trauma, psychological and sexual harassment, workplace bullying, equal opportunity and other (real) problems that affect performance levels. • Issues of payment, promotion, grievance, resignation, retirement, disciplinary, termination, reemployment, leave, shift allowances and other personnel issues are resolved fairly and consistently. • A structured ideas management process incorporating recognition and reward initiates innovation and sustainable improvement. • Effective performance measures and feedback ensure that personal contributions are aligned with the key objectives, strategies and action plans. • You collaborate with your people to engage in external projects that demonstrate social responsibility and/or environmental concern. • You measure performance in the areas of health, safety, security and ergonomics and use this to make sustainable improvement. You provide flexible working arrangements where practical. • If problems occur, you conduct investigations and ‘root cause analysis’ without blame to create a climate where the truth can be heard in the search for understanding and learning. • You use clearly defined systems with clearly defined constraints but give people freedom and responsibility within the framework of those systems. • You argue and debate in search of understanding, not from the egoistic need to win a point or protect a parochial interest. If you would like information on a system and tools designed to achieve this and much more, see superthinker.com and click on 2. Benchmark Business Improver.