Employee Quotes & Sayings

Belonging to the working class is the economy's punishment for those who did what they were told to do in class. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here. — Paulo Coelho

Any feeling of security is only in your head. Anything could happen at any time. As long as you are strictly someone's employee at one company, you're a liability on the balance sheet. I say that as a business owner. We cannot trust any government to provide us with what we need, nor is that its responsibility. We cannot trust most employers either. Insulate yourself with multiple incomes either from different companies or by working for yourself in addition to one main source of income. Diversify and protect yourself. - Chris Lutz, Modular Career Design — Chris Lutz

Make yourself accountable and your employees will hold themselves to a high standard. — David J. Greer

Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders - in that order. — Simon Sinek

We seem to be paying some of our employees an awful lot of money. — Don Ameche

Weekends are an employee's parole. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I have always thought of myself as an inventor first and foremost. An engineer. An entrepreneur. In that order. I never thought of myself as an employee. But my first jobs as an adult were as an employee: at IBM, and then at my first start-up. — Aaron Patzer

You [the employees] are involved in a crusade. — Herb Kelleher

You know you are capitalism's ideal puppet (and that education betrayed you) when winning the lottery is your only chance to realizing financial freedom. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

She might have to use her employee discount to buy something more threatening today, although at the moment the most dangerous thing she could think of that Neiman Marcus had to offer was the employee discount itself. — Stephanie Bond

The ability to sell - to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse, or child - is the base skill of personal success. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

The only consequence of their (employee) silence is that the blind (employer) lead the blind. — Margaret Heffernan

I'm glad you came here and got the help you needed, Neil says, and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you're the patient and they're the doctor/volunteer/ employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you're still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment. — Ned Vizzini

When they [Democrats] running all these ads that are characterizing [Mitt] Romney as a rich, insensitive, out of touch, aloof nerd who loved having his dog on the roof of the station wagon, who didn't care when the wife of an employee dies with cancer. — Rush Limbaugh

Weekends are life's gift to those who hate their jobs. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The worst type of employee you can have is one who has mentally quit and is still physically coming to work every day. — David Cottrell

Motivated employees are crucial to a company's success. — Anne Rice

The supermarket chain Whole Foods has quite a radical employee empowerment program, where employees get to decide whether another employee can work in their team or not. If they think this person's a slacker, doesn't have good ideas, they can vote and say, no, we don't want this person to be working with us on the vegetable aisle. — Tim Harford

How come you don't ever hear about gruntled employees? And who has been dis-ing them anyhow? — Steven Wright

Thus the only Goldman Sachs employee arrested by the FBI in the aftermath of a financial crisis Goldman had done so much to fuel was the employee Goldman asked the FBI to arrest. — Michael Lewis

What are you doing here?" a deep voice demanded. My heart burst into a rapid staccato as I swung around, ready to defend myself. Only instead of a guard or employee, Giguhl sat a few feet away laughing at me.
"Dammit, you scared the crap out of me."
He laughed, a spooky noise coming from an even spookier-looking cat. "You should have seen your face. — Jaye Wells

I see companies these days where thoughts of "exits" are foremost in the minds of top management and board, and it is so clear that this value will infect the decision making down to the smallest choice by the most junior employee. Do we create something that is good, or just that seems good and might get us acquired or funded? — Brad Stone

What's the return on investment of college? What's the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What's at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human. — William Deresiewicz

Jeff then proceeded to ask me a few questions, mainly dealing with how I'd react in certain situations, what I'd do if I saw a fellow employee stealing, and just general questions I was asked at my last job. I guess he wanted to make sure I was morally sound and not somebody who was going to steal paperclips and sell them on the black market. — M.L. Young

You either go through your life working for someone and getting a paycheck - and it can be a damn good paycheck, and I am not complaining as someone who has always been a salaried employee - or you can go out and become an entrepreneur. — Al Michaels

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn't good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950's, he was employed for Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported back to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again. — Mark Vonnegut

That's what counted. It was more than a security system: it was a state of mind. Although Herkmoor had suffered many escape attempts, some extraordinarily clever, none had succeeded - and every guard at Herkmoor, every employee, was acutely aware of that fact — Douglas Preston

Until a job is outsourced or streamlined through an innovation, an employee is trained to operate robotically. This is what a brand is. — John-Talmage Mathis

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people. — Tony Judt

Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients-the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.. — Malcolm Wallop

What these [personality] tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine since the 'right' answer should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders ... The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information being conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us. We don't just want your muscles and that portion of your brain that is directly connected to them; we want your innermost self. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The economic metaphor came to be applied to every aspect of modern life, especially the areas where it simply didn't belong. In fields such as education, equality of opportunity, health, employee's rights, the social contract and culture, the first conversation to happen should be about values and principles; then you have the conversation about costs, and what you as a society can afford. — John Lanchester

I think Google's founders are both a couple of guys with some high ideals which have been to some degree reflected in the way the company has been run in terms of its having a very good workplace and good employee programs, and now that they're going public they want in some ways to be able to ensure that that kind of approach continues. So they've effectively put in place this notion of "Don't Be Evil". — Joel Bakan

Oh, aren't you the cutest? Yes, you are! You're the sweetest thing since cotton candy, Nan was saying. The pups yipped and crawled over each other in an attempt to lick the glass window where her hand rested. Before long, a cute red-haired employee named Greg, spotted Nan's interest and offered to bring the puppies to the viewing pen. — Chanda Hahn

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their power in the common interests advanced by the union. — Theodore Roosevelt

Starbucks considers a product's success not only in terms of consumer acceptance but also in terms of employee — Fast Company

Employees will only add more value over time. — Sam Altman

Being an employee is a bad outcome. You want to avoid that. Being an employee is never a good outcome. That's just an opinion. — Kevin O'Leary

A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee. — John Ortberg

Love comes in seemingly insignificant moments and if you're not paying attention, you might miss them. — Roxanne Snopek

Teamwork is the foundation of success. The three universal questions that an individual asks of his coach, player, employee, employer are: Can I trust you? Are you committed to excellence? And, do you care about me? — Lou Holtz

Showing leadership doesn't mean every employee will run the organization; that would lead to chaos. Businesses do need someone to set the vision and then lead the team to it. — Robin S. Sharma

Profits are related to customer retention. Customer retention is related to employee retention. Employee retention may or may not be related to benefits, but benefits could be part of the package that causes people to stay and
by the way
engage in discretionary effort.. If you go into any organization that's customer-facing, you can tell in five minutes when the employees are feeling abused. They retaliate on the customers. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Big businesses are beginning to realize that the employee who puts his job before his home life is not as effective as the one who has a happy, fulfilling marriage. — Kevin Leman

If we abuse our go-to person and overtask them, we have to be willing to accept attrition because an overworked employee will end up leaving. — Nicholas Ripplinger

Employee networks are extremely valuable to companies as a source of information. As Bill Gates wrote more than a decade ago, "The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose."1 — Reid Hoffman

If you purchased the latest Joss Stone CD, what you're saying is that you're an employee of VH1. — Christian Finnegan

There was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society. When your neighbor, your mechanic, your favorite basketball player, your employer or employee, or even your children's friends could very well be Muslims, the need for proper understanding and an effective Christian witness is abundantly clear. — Josh McDowell

If you want what visible reality can give, you are an employee.
If you want the unseen world you are not living with your truth.
Both wishes are foolish, but you'll be forgiven for forgetting that what you really want is loves confusing joy. — Rumi

Employment is the exploitation of the employer's courage, and, the employed's fear of failure. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Every employee must be essential to the functions of the organization. — Brian Tracy

I interview every employeeand I have 3000 employees. It's an obsessive sickness. — Stephen Starr

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions. — Ben Horowitz

When you found a company, you have the original vision, you make all the original decisions, you know every employee, you kind of know every aspect of the product architecture and its limitations. — Ben Horowitz

Starving whilst schooled is like a man's finding out that his wife is on her periods ... a few seconds after he took Viagra. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Our employee engagement surveys showed a 30 percent improvement in lost sick days in one year. People are calling in sick less because they are feeling more empowered, more of a sense of ownership, and more connected." Jump-Starting — Thomas L. Friedman

A leader should be a visionary and have more foresight than an employee. — Jack Ma

Little in American culture, politics, or business encourages the institutionalization of a collective employee voice. — Nelson Lichtenstein

Give your typical employee a profitable corporation, and, he is mostly likely to sell it to buy a fancier suit for his next job interview. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Technical expertise is only a tiny portion of what it takes to be a successful employee and, particularly, a successful leader. — Joanie Connell

Depending on the skill and will of the individual, the right leadership style may be coaching, motivating, or directing rather than delegating. A leader has to pick the right style of leadership for each employee, and it is not one-size-fits-all, — Thomas Lee

If we think that innovation comes from a lone genius inventing a new technology from scratch, that model naturally steers us toward certain policy decisions, like stronger patent protection. But if we think that innovation comes out of collaborative networks, then we want to support different policies and organizational forms: less rigid patent laws, open standards, employee participation in stock plans, cross-disciplinary connections. — Steven Johnson

Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note. — Charles Duhigg

As his self-defenses seemed to indicate. When the younger employee — Norman Vincent Peale

Prostitutes are paid for taking their clothes off. Celebrities are paid for putting others' clothes on. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An education system is best belittled when the so-called educated gets hired by a company that's owned by a so-called dropout. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue. — Elmore Leonard

With an operating profit margin topping 40 percent, Fanuc makes 25 percent more income per employee than Goldman Sachs, — Anonymous

Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it. — Timothy R. Clark

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

Workplace culture is the heartbeat of an organization, and either yields energy and motivates people to pursue greatness or sucks the inspiration out of employees and slowly brings a business to a grinding halt. — Kevin E. Phillips

Work is a vehicle with which man chases some fleeting destination called a full tummy. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If working-hours were natural, then employed men would only get erections between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. ... during the week. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I know what she is talking about.
Namely, everything I refused to talk about, in court: what it is like to know that you are a target, because of the color of your skin. What it means to work hard, to be an impeccable employee, and have none of that make a difference in the face of prejudice. — Jodi Picoult

Treat your employees like customers. — Herb Kelleher

The punch line is 'knock the morale of an employee and organizational productivity is punctured'. — Henrietta Newton Martin

The overall organizational health needs to be measured via employee engagement, culture readiness, business agility, and customer-centricity, etc. — Pearl Zhu

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

After much deliberation and research, we have defi ned employee engagement as: The degree to which a person commits to an organization and the impact that commitment has on how profoundly they perform and their length of tenure . It is important to note that engagement is not an on/off switch. It is a continuum, and we will have employees who fall in various places on the continuum. The key to engagement is to move employees further along that continuum over time, as seen in Figure 1.7 . — Anonymous

Playing Solitaire is a non-smoking employee's smoke break. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Psalm 111:10. The fear of God. The awe and dread of all that spooky action at a distance. And the Devil was understood to be less an adversary than a particularly evil employee of God. He was that bastard in the Human Resources Department who looks for ways to screw with your life. Satan was real. And he wandered around each day with an eye out for opportunities to tempt ordinary people into sinning. And God allowed it. There was presumably a housing crisis in Heaven or something, and he let Satan roam the earth, tricking people out of their renting privileges in the afterlife. — Warren Ellis

Being an employee was considered a form of bondage, only a step above indentured servitude. — John Curl

We felt that the employees would take a greater interest in work if they felt they were part of the company. — William Redington Hewlett

The Bethlehem profit-sharing system is based on my belief that every man should get exactly what he makes himself worth. This is the only plan I know of which is equally fair to the employers and every class of employee. Someday, I hope, all labor troubles will be solved by such a system. — Charles M. Schwab

A few of the managers we spoke with for this book worried that the tour of duty framework might give employees "permission" to leave. But permission is not yours to give or to withhold, and believing you have that power is simply a self-deception that leads to a dishonest relationship with your employees. Employees don't need your permission to switch companies, and if you try to assert that right, they'll simply make their move behind your back. — Reid Hoffman

Trust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace. — Reid Hoffman

The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both. — Edward Abbey

A boss wants to pay for results, an employee wants recognition for effort. If a boss recognizes effort, they will get even better results. — Simon Sinek

Our society has become an employee society. — Peter Drucker

I want to say here and now, that I demand unshakable integrity of every State employee. — Charles Edison

We are superior to the competition because we hire employees who work in an environment of belonging and purpose. We foster a climate where the employee can deliver what the customer wants. You cannot deliver what the customer wants by controlling the employee. — Horst Schulze

Therefore, at about the age of twenty-one, I made to myself the solemn vow that I would never be an employee or put up with a "regular job." I have not always been able to fulfill this vow. I have had to work (in a reasonably independent manner) for the Church and for a graduate school, but since the age of forty-two I have been a free lance, a rolling stone, and a shaman ... — Alan W. Watts

A bad attitude from a chronic complaining employee is like a cancer; it will only spread and infect others. This can take your business down in a nanosecond. You must cut out the cancer and invite them to seek employment elsewhere. Quickly. — Beth Ramsay

Character is just another term for "good person." A person of character lives a worthy life guided by moral principles. A person of character is a good parent, a good friend, a good employee and a good citizen. — Michael Josephson

The underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform. — Reid Hoffman

There was another pause and then Bastien clucked and snapped, "Dammit, Thomas! Inez is one of my best employees."
He pulled the phone away from his ear to peer at it with disbelief, and then slapped it back to his head. "What the hell has that got to do with anything?"
"Well, if you had to find your lifemate, couldn't it have been someone else's employee. I'm going to lose her now. She'll want to be with you and come to Canada and
— Lynsay Sands

Like vampires and extremely rich people, black folk can sense one another. Use your Spidey Sense (Blacky Sense?). Use your blackdar to inspect the workplace for signs of Other Negroes. They may be working security for the building. They may be in administrative support. They may be among the associate pool, or they may even be in upper management. Black folk can be anywhere. After all, you're here. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make as The Black Employee is to assume you are the only one. — Baratunde R. Thurston

Have you thanked a front-line employee for carrying around a great attitude ... today? — Tom Peters