I think it's important (yes I got sucked back in) to say there is an awful lot of misunderstanding or maybe a lot of purposeful misconstruing going on. So let me be clear about a few things.
1. No business should abuse their employees. Asking them to work 80 hours a week is not right. Asking them to work 45-50 hours occasionally when something comes up is not above the pale. If you treat them well the other times they will do it without complaint. Especially if you are working along side them. People need to balance life with work. We NEED work. But we also need our friends and family. Time to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor. It's very poor leadership take that away from people. You are not a leader, your a dictator. You don't care a lot about people. Real leaders care.
And if you treat you people right in that way you will find the real gems who are willing to give extra time and extra effort when it is needed and not just when it's an emergency. They will be your future leaders.
2. Businesses can rarely hire enough workers these days. With a 3% unemployment rate you cannot fill all the needed positions to cover contingencies that come up. Let me provide an example. You have a staff that is specialized in what they do. You need 10 people working full time to get the job done. But you try to account for the need of someone going on vacation, being out sick, getting injured etc. You try and account for that by saying you need 13 employees. However, you can only find 10. So, well we need to offer more money to entice more people. So you offer more money. More money than anyone else in the area. But despite that you only find one more that is interested in the work. So you hire the one. Then someone quits cause they decide to do something else. Now you are back to 10. Then all those ten get a total of 20 weeks of vacation a year. 80 hours per employee who work has to be done now by someone else. You can't hire a temp to fill it cause it takes months to train someone up to speed.
It's extremely naive to think every job is able to be filled simply by offering more money. Not everyone is interested or even capable of doing the work no matter how much you offer. We have had quite a few businesses close in our area due to staff shortages despite offering very good wages.
3. Businesses do need to offer fair pay for fair work. That's part of taking care of your people. It's true that you won't attract the best people with poor wages. With higher wages should also come higher standards and higher expectations. If you are an average worker you should expect average pay. If you are a great worker, and do what is asked of you, you don't steal time and you give some extra you should expect better pay and better opportunities. You will never move up in a company without standing out. Unless the company is desperate.
But companies need to be fair with their pay. Screwing over people is just inexcusable and you won't attract or keep good people. Again it's about caring for your people.
4. Train your people. You cannot expect them to do the job well or right without proper training. It just creates frustration and dissatisfaction.
5. Offer them opportunities to grow. Give them work that's not specifically in their job description. Good wording to use is "and other duties as assigned". But don't over use this. The reason for this is development. You are a really bad leader if you don't prepare for the future. Employees have to learn to grow. Leaders are created. It's a poor company that hasn't offered employees opportunities to grow and learn new skills and thought processes. Sometimes that comes with assignments. How they tackle those assignments says a lot about the person and if they have any leadership abilities. But do not give them an assignment without helping them. Telling them to do something they have never done nor had any training on and just leaving them to flounder, is not leadership. Real leadership is having them do something they have never done and then providing them the support, the tools and the guidance they need to be successful at it. If they fail, it's your fault as the leader. It's not on them, it's on you.
6. You have to offer feedback. And I don't just mean negative feedback. People need to know when they are doing well and how much you appreciate them. Spend time with them one on one. Get to know them, their values what they want to accomplish and provide feedback on how they can do that. Don't feed them a crap sandwich with praise on the top, criticism in the middle and praise on the bottom. That never works. Save you constructive criticism for specific times and events and show them exactly what to do to improve. Ask them how you can improve. What can you do better for them. Ask them how you can help them reach their goals.
So this often and not just once a year. Never ever surprise them on an evaluation. When they receive one they should know exactly what's on it cause you've been talking the entire year with them.
Whew I could go in but that's it.