Yesterday I attended the retirement ceremony for a Marine Corps buddy of mine, Ken Maney. After twenty of years of honorable service he will move on to a new phase of his life. He served all over the world, to include combat in Iraq, and he leaves a legacy of Marines who are better because they served with him.

A retirement ceremony in the Marines is special. There are a few platoons of Marines in formation, the flag of our nation and the unit are present, there a multitude of guests (I would estimate a few hundred at this one), the family is there getting special recognition too, there is the letter from the President, the letter from the Governor of California (Yes, Ken now has a letter from the Terminator), the letter from the General, and the band is there too. The band!

As I watched the Corps honor the contributions of LtCol Maney I started thinking about corporate America. What does a business do when someone retires? I think in the old days you used to get a dinner and a gold watch. Did that really happen? From what I have seen that doesn’t happen today. First of all, does anyone stay in one place for 20 years? Either people move on or the firm downsizes to save a few bucks. But what do we do for those people who do stay for two decades, or more. I know the answers are as varied as the number of businesses in our society but I can make a few generalizations.

There is no band. There are not a few hundred guests. The family does not get special recognition and the President of the company doesn’t send a letter. OK, maybe in some places these things happen but in most places I don’t think they do.

Of course my point is not that there needs to be a band. My point is we should be doing special things for special people. The norm is handshakes and lunch with five people from the office who got the email sent that morning that there would be a dutch treat lunch in two hours and were able to attend. Pathetic. Employee loyalty and high performance doesn’t come from any one management behavior or action. Respectful and robust retirement ceremonies are just one of many things we can do to demonstrate our respect for the people in the organization.

Next time someone retires. Strike up the band!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.