In a recent article in the San Antonio Express-News, Dave Beck (president of Frost Bank) writes:

“While compensation and benefits are important elements in making an employee feel valued, an attitude of genuine concern and caring can be even more important.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to think, “Yeah, right!” but then I remembered an incident a few years back, when I was only six weeks into a new job, yet I had to ask for several weeks of leave because my husband needed very scary, very urgent surgery. My boss–and her boss–were very generous in granting me the leave I needed to focus on my husband’s health. His surgery had a happy outcome, but an unexpected outcome for me was the warm fuzzy feeling I had from believing that my boss and her boss really cared. When I went back to work, I cared very much about doing a good job for them.

So maybe there’s something to the touchy-feely idea about employers needing to care about their people, and if there is, what should we as communicators be doing about it?