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.