Leadership: The 14 Success Principles of JobSample

4. Fair Employment

In his fourth principle, Job moves away from personal conduct to corporate policy. In Job’s world, he wants to be known as one who treats his employees with fairness. 

In the pursuit of success, company management and executive leadership focus on meeting quarterly targets, annual goals, or some other metric. It’s easy to reduce your personal and corporate performance to a set of numbers. As the saying goes, “numbers don’t lie”, plus they’re easily understood by all.

As the owner and general manager of his own affairs, Job may have been tempted to do the same. After all, he already had an accurate count of his key business assets: 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and a large number of servants (Job 1:2). He likely also had a plan for the growth of those assets over time.

Beyond the numbers, listen to how Job says he wants all of his employees to be treated fairly:

If I have denied justice to any of my servants, whether male or female, when they had a grievance against me…  – Job 31:13

In Job’s day, there was a definite class distinction between owners (like Job) and the servants (usually slaves, not free-will employees like we have today). This distinction made it easy for owners to take advantage of employees.

Job, however, would have none of that, and wanted to be set apart as a fair employer, who treated every one of his workers in fairness, to the point of no unresolved complaints or open issues with any of them.

Although he lived over 2,000 years before Christ, Job’s principle was completely consistent with the Apostle Paul’s teachings in the New Testament: 

Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.  – Colossians 4:1 

The concept of a Master in heaven was not foreign to Job, and given the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, should also not be foreign to you today either.

While you may still pursue numerical targets of various types in your pursuit of success, a key principle is to value each and every employee, regardless of their position, function, or contribution to your organization. After all, each of those employees has the same set of God-given rights as you have, even if God has chosen to place you in a position of leadership over them.

Reflection / Application  

1. Most organizations are managed by the numbers, with some “soft goals” around the edges. How do your leadership goals compare?  
2. Job wanted every employee (servant) to be treated justly, even if that was not the norm of the day. As a Christian leader, what steps have you taken to show fairness to employees who others might not think necessary?  
3. How does extra “fairness” to employees demonstrate the love of Christ? What additional measures might you take for the sake of the Kingdom?