Walking into my favourite fast food joint, Nando's, on Monday I noticed a poster on the door that said something to the effect of, "Please take note that we'll be closed on 13th November 2007." Hardly noticing it, I thought to myself that they'll probably be having a staff training day, or at the very worst some form of refurbishment. How wrong I was!

It turns out that every Nando's store in the country was closed for the day - the whole day! Not for some training, nor for some refurbishments, but for a company wide conference ... for every single Nando's employee. Every one of them - hence, no store could be open. Fortunately, I did not require my regular fix of a Burger Meal, so I was not inconvenienced. But should I have been in need of a burger how pleased I would have been to know that all 6,000 Nando's staff were on a conference celebrating their 20 year birthday!

And so, sitting in a meeting with a client today, discussing some of the outputs from a session with staff where there was a significant thread regarding how under-valued they feel, the client asked, "How do we communicate that our people matter to us?" My answer: learn a lesson from Nando's!

Typically the barrier to having ALL your staff on conference is a bottom line barrier ... how can we stand to lose a full-days operating profits? Who will answer the phones? How can we possibly inconvenience clients like that?

BUT, think about the message it communicates to your staff ... that they are more important than a days takings at the till. Awesome.

I can tell you that they'll be making up that loss from customers like me who will support Nando's even more now that I know how much they value the blokes who put my burger's together.