Employees are your greatest asset.
You may have heard that customers should come first. However, it’s also debatable that your employees should come first instead. They bring great value into your organization with skills and talent that can’t easily be replaced.
Sir Richard Branson himself said:
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients”
In other words, employees are essential and should be your first priority, not your customers.
How Should We Treat Our Employees?
It’s common knowledge to treat people the way you want to be treated.
The same concept applies in the workplace. Employers should be treating employees with the respect they deserve. In any situation, it’s not acceptable to look down or condescend any of your team members.
Everyone is equal. It doesn’t matter if you have a higher salary or position than them.
You’ll quickly lose the respect and loyalty of your employees if they’re not happy. When they leave your company with a bad experience, it also affects your brand image and reputation. But at the same time, you shouldn’t be too friendly. Being too nice may potentially risk employees from taking you as seriously and completing their tasks to a good standard.
Recruiting strategies are helpful for acquiring the top talent. However, retaining them and maintaining a good level of engagement is just as important.
Why Should Employers Treat Employees With Honesty and Respect?
Your employees are the ones who can take care of your customers for you.
They’re being hired for a purpose and that’s because of the skills, expertise, and value that they can bring to your organization. Chances are, they’re more skilled and talented than you in a specific field, e.g. sales or marketing.
Since that’s the case, they should be a priority.
To ensure they stay for the long-term, you need to treat them well in your work environment and throughout the initial recruitment process.
If they care about doing their job to the best standard, your business will ultimately take care of itself. However, if they hate their job for whatever reason, it’s going to have a negative impact on your company’s success.
That’s one of the reasons why it’s vital to treat your employees with honesty and respect.
Besides that, everyone should be treated equally without any disrespect to begin with. We all want to feel valued, fulfilled, and have a sense of belonging in and outside of our careers.
What Makes a Good Team Leader?
A good team leader will have strong self-awareness and are capable of bringing the team together as well as boosting morale. They’ll have strong social skills and can read between the lines, which is crucial.
It’s also important to understand the projects you’re working on and the strengths of each employee. This improves your approach
Here are some good leadership qualities:
- Takes accountability
- Decisive
- Humility
- Good listeners
- Public speaking
- Self-confidence
- Selflessness
- Passionate
A bad leader will have inept communication skills and are slow at reading the situation.
They would also be ignorant of what’s happening behind the scenes with their team, e.g. arising conflict between two employees.
As a manager, identifying and assessing the most skilled candidates isn’t the only important task. Besides improving the talent acquisition process, you need to cultivate a motivated and productive work environment for the best results.
How Do You Treat Employees With Respect and Dignity?
If you’d like to yield greater results and ROI, it’s important that you treat employees with respect and dignity. They won’t do the work to the best of their ability if they dislike where they work, which stops you from getting the best possible outcome.
In order to reach the company’s full potential and ensure the best business growth, the efforts of your team will be a decisive factor.
So, let’s dig into how you should be treating your employees.
1. Be Honest and Have Full Transparency
It’s difficult to build a brand image, but easy to destroy. Not having full transparency isn’t the best for a long-term, thriving relationship.
If you want your employees to trust you, it’s important to have an open and honest relationship with them. When you withhold information unethically or deceive your own team, they’ll quickly lose respect for you.
2. No Prejudice, Bias, or Favoritism
Good leaders will show equal respect to those who deserve it, i.e. your employees.
While you should aim to create a fun work environment where you enjoy what you do and genuinely desire to carry out your tasks, there should be a policy where prejudice, bias, or favoritism are not tolerable.
It can lead to conflict between your co-workers. If you favor one person over another it can cause an abrupt and negative commotion in your organization.
Others may also become unmotivated since their efforts aren’t being recognized. As a result, it may cause less diversity in your work culture and lower team morale.
3. Listen To Your Employees
Everyone should be treated fairly. It’s great if your employees are listening to your input and taking action using your feedback. But, you should also be doing the same thing.
That means paying attention to your employees and reciprocating by listening to them when they share ideas. It’s a good opportunity for gaining new insights from their creativity which could improve your approach for future activities.
If you want positive results and better productivity, their input is just as important as your customers.
4. Give Credit Where It’s Due
We all want to feel appreciated, yet not everyone is acknowledged for their work.
Research from HubSpot revealed that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were acknowledged.
Workers won’t feel valued if their efforts aren’t being recognized, which can be demotivating. So, make sure you give credits where they’re due. Acknowledge an employee’s efforts when they’ve done a commendable job.
5. Acknowledge Everyone
Never leave a single employee out. When your employees are being left out, it’s your job to read the situation and try to get them involved.
Sharing accomplishments and acknowledging the presence of each of your employees makes them feel valued. When you praise and award them too, not only does it feel great. But, it can improve the attitude of everyone else in your company by motivating and encouraging them to step up.
This is another effective way to instill enthusiasm and self-esteem in your employees.
6. Maintain Professional Conduct
It’s good practice to maintain professional conduct and behavior in the work environment.
That means not doing anything uncalled for and unnecessary, e.g. gossiping about colleagues or getting too involved in their personal lives via social media. Unless it’s appropriate, you should also try to avoid using profanity.
By practicing these values in your company culture, it makes boundaries clear. This ensures you maintain your position of respect and authority.
7. Be Kind and Polite
Your employees are not robots designed to work 24/7. They’re human beings, people just like me and you.
Set your ego aside in the workplace and practice the qualities of a good team player. In general, you should always be kind to others because you never know what they might be going through in their own lives. If you want them to be loyal and continue working for you, job and workplace satisfaction are key.
They have other things going on in their day aside from work. Take this into consideration. You never know what may happen once they put their real effort in when they’re comfortable to communicate and work with you.
8. Give Your Employees Treats
Something as simple as providing a small gift can go a long way in developing trust and a strong relationship. Whenever you treat your colleagues and employees, it implies that you appreciate them which makes them feel valued.
Another quote by Sir Richard Branson states:
“Train your employees well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
Job security and company benefits are one of the main concerns for employees. Making them happier and showing regular appreciation will lead to lower employee turnover rates. The pay won’t be the only thing that motivates them when deciding what company to work with. Their happiness is also a decisive factor.
9. Practice What You Preach
Good leaders will take ownership and accountability for themselves and for the mistakes of their team.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Despite being the employer or manager, you don’t have the privilege to do whatever you want. You can quickly lose the trust of your team when you don’t abide by your own principles. This will have a negative influence on your workers and can lead to a bad reputation.
If employees have to deal with several discourteous situations, eventually they’ll change workplaces, pursue other options and job opportunities where they are respected.
How Can Employers Support Mental Health?
This should be one of your main concerns – without taking care of each employee, it leads to an unfulfilled role and poor productivity.
As an employer, it’s important to be checking up on each and every person on your team. It’s also key to raise mental health awareness in the workplace and to ensure the well-being of your employees.
One way to help is by being someone they can trust and talk to. That’s another reason why communication and treating your employees with respect is important. Try to be flexible for your employees and prioritize them first.
The pandemic is a prime example of why mental health awareness is important. In times like this, we need to be there for each other.
Other things you can do to support mental health include:
- Schedule 1-to-1 meetings on a regular basis with employees
- Listen and empathize with them
- Provide appropriate education and in-house training
- Encourage physical activity and exercise, e.g. offer gym memberships
- Consider getting professional help and support
The well-being of every employee is important. When this isn’t taken care of, you won’t retain your teams of skilled employees.
Overall, poor mental health leads to less effective human resources and management. Even after spending hours in the office, when collaboration is poor and there are regular conflicts, the quality of work completed won’t be the best it could be.
Final Thoughts
Work becomes a lot easier when you have a team of satisfied, talented employees who are motivated to succeed in your company.
Despite the benefits of recruiting software, it won’t mean much when employees don’t find their contributions meaningful and aren’t engaged with their jobs. The net worth of your organization is directly linked to the performance of each employee.
Plus, there’s a good chance they know something about your business that you don’t.
They can offer valuable insights which can lead to better service. Yet, not all companies and managers are making the most out of it.
Start building a happy community by first taking genuine care of your partners and employees. They’re the ones who can take care of your clients and build a better performing business for you.
This article was written by Astley, who is an avid content marketer who specializes in writing for the HR Tech and B2B SaaS industry. Learn more at Minimalist Copy.