Three focuses of my blog are Business/Entrepreneurship, Organizational/Management Discussions and Workplace Discussions. When you own a business or are in management of some kind, your employees need to feel that you respect them in order for them to give you their best effort. The following contributed post is entitled, Building Respect Between Your Company & Its Employees.
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There are a lot of reasons why you might want to have a lot of respect going on between your company and the people who work for it. For one thing, that is generally going to lead to a much better working culture, as people feel more appreciated and generally find themselves happier to work hard and long. It also means that the relationships between people will improve, which can be enormously helpful as well. And it will mean that the company is in a better place to improve generally.
In this post, we are therefore going to take a look at some of the major ways in which you can hope to build more respect between your company and its employees. You should find that a lot of these ways are quite simple to enact, and yet powerful in their results, so that is something that you should certainly think about. Let’s take a look.
Nurture mutual trust
It’s important to build and nurture trust within teams to optimize productivity and enhance well-being and job satisfaction, but trust should be mutual. Employees should have trust in their employer, but crucially, employers must also be able to trust their team. There are multiple ways to establish strong relationships, including open communication, frequent conversations and understanding what is expected of you as either an employer or an employee. Employees should respect the terms of their employment contract and business owners and team leaders should have realistic expectations of their team.
There are additional steps employers can take such as using substance testing services provided by companies like Genesis Reference Laboratories but this is a personal choice. In some industries, regular testing is recommended, but this is not always the case. If you don’t operate within these sectors, for example, healthcare, aviation and transport, it’s best to focus on establishing solid, long-lasting relationships through transparency, consistency, being honest and open and showing employees that you respect, value and appreciate them.
Show Respect In The Workplace
One of the first things you should aim to do here is to try and show some respect in the workplace in general, to the staff working there as well as to one another. That’s a really fundamental way to ensure that everyone has a much better experience in the workplace, and it’s something that is actually relatively easy to build up. It all begins with you – as long as you personally, as the manager or leader of the business, are showing respect to people in a really basic, human way, that is going to then become the norm across the board.
So start today. If you think that you might have been letting this slide, it might be a good idea to think about improving it right now. The sooner you start, the better, as this is going to mean that you see the results a lot sooner. If nothing else, you are probably going to find that doing this makes it much more enjoyable to just spend time in the workplace, and that’s a great feeling in itself and certainly something to consider.
Hold Your Company To Its Values
Most people will find it a lot easier to enjoy working for a company that has good values, and which sticks to those values as much as possible. So if you are thinking of trying to do that, you need to make sure that you, first, decide on some values which your company can stick to, and then second, actually make sure that you do so. What those values are can vary a lot, but these days it’s going to be wise if they are good for the planet and for society in general.
Once your company is sticking to its values in this way, you’ll find that you are much more likely to have a lot of respect for employees, and the same will be in return too. That’s a really important thing that it is well worth trying to achieve from the start. It’s especially powerful if you are personally happy with those values as well.
Work On Employee Satisfaction
In a general way, anything you can do to improve employee satisfaction is always going to be really helpful towards improving what your employees think about the company and about working for the company. That is the kind of thing that is always going to be vital to consider, so it’s important that you are paying attention to that and that you are working on employee satisfaction specifically in all the ways you can. As it happens, there are a lot of ways that you might be able to do that.
For instance, you can make sure that you are providing a workplace that people are able to enjoy working in, and that the pay and benefits are as strong as can be. Those are the kinds of essential things which you will want to make sure you are providing from the first, and as best as you can. It’s likely going to mean that your employees are naturally and organically much happier to work for you, which is the main basis of a good relationship between the company and the people who work for it.
Don’t Underestimate Good Branding
Branding is not only the kind of thing you need to think about when you are marketing your business. It’s also something that affects how your employees feel about working for you. After all, the better the public image of the business is, the better people are going to feel about working for that business. So you should definitely make sure that you are working on the branding regularly, keeping the public image as positive and bold as you can, so that your people really enjoy and feel proud about the work.
There are a lot of ways to do that, but it all comes down to having a decent outreach process. If you are doing that right, you should find that you ultimately get to a place where your business is widely respected, and these days it’s easier than ever to achieve this. It’s amazing how much it helps, so it’s certainly something you will want to pay attention to.
Train Your Employees
Good training is important for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones in this regard is that it ensures that your employees are going to be a lot more confident in their work, and generally feel more capable. But it also means that you are showing them you trust them and you think that they are capable of more. That is something which feeds into the positive relationship really well, and which you are therefore going to want to think about a lot.
You can offer all kinds of training which employees will appreciate having. That might be team training, leadership training for those that you think would do well with the role, or something like a first aid certification, or even fire marshall training. Giving people more responsibility in this way tends to improve the relationship quite a lot, so it’s well worth thinking about doing this for sure.
Be Fair
In all of your dealings with your employees, make sure that you are being as fair as possible. That is important for a number of reasons. For one thing, it means that they are going to feel that you are actually acting how you should as an employer, and that casts a good light on the company more generally. It also means that they will know they can trust you, and having good trust is central to any relationship. That is something that you should definitely think about here.
How can you make sure you are being fair? For one thing, take care that pay is done fairly and that everyone is given equal opportunities to achieve and to grow in their position. That is the kind of thing that people really appreciate and which you should be careful not to overlook. As long as you are fair to people, the relationship will improve significantly, so that’s something that you should make sure to think about.
Those are just some of the main ways that you can build respect between your company and your employees. As long as you have done that, it will mean great things for them as well as for you – and the company itself is much more likely to see a lot of success in its future, which is obviously good news too.
