Over the years, I have encouraged employers to make sure their employees truly understand the firm’s business model by providing some vivid explanations. One of these has been to bring a stack of cash into an all-company meeting and demonstrate how that $3000 purchase becomes a net of about $50-100 after expenses, taxes and so on.
I recently mentioned this idea to a group of executives in Ottawa. After the meeting one of them told me how he had tried a similar approach by holding up a ten dollar bill and then tearing off pieces of it to represent the various expenses. He hold me that after the meeting one of his long-tenured employees picked up all those pieces, taped the bill back to together and stuck it in his pocket.
It is sometimes easy to forget how every dollar counts when your dealing with the large sums that flow through a business. But not to those in the oldest generation who still embrace the phrase “scrimp and save.”