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Learn to Respect Employees
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All rights reserved
By Ken Chapman, Ph.D.
Ken Chapman & Associates, Inc.
In this age of “do more with less,” employees value every minute
of the workday. As a leader, you need to respect their time and value it as
much as they do. Here are some things to remember.
1. Do not abuse your cell phone. When you are on the commute
home and you know a key employee is working late, it is tempting to call to
talk business. Don’t. Employees do not arrive early or stay late for fun,
they are trying to accomplish something and giving up their personal time to
do so. Let them work in peace.
2. Ask for permission to extend meeting times. Set specific
times for meetings and then insist that everyone, yourself included, is on
time. When assigning a time, set a finishing time as well so employees can
better schedule their days. [“We’ll meet from 10:00 to 10:45”]. If the
meeting proves to be productive and you do not want to quit at the
designated time, ask employees if it is okay to extend the meeting and offer
employees who need to leave the chance to do so.
3. Learn to make 24-hour promises and stick to them. When an
employee comes to you with a question and you do not know the answer, do not
blow it off. They will waste time finding the answer somewhere else. Tell
them, “I’ll be in my office 24 hours from now with an answer. Meet me
there.” Then jot down the problem and the appointed time in your day
planner. Make sure you have an answer waiting.
4. Create a “time suckers” committee. Have committee members
weed out unnecessary time wasting reports, meetings, processes, etc.
Encourage other employees to nominate things to be eliminated. Keep track
of your progress on a “time suckers” bulletin board.
5. Reward the families of hard-working employees. If workers
are staying late on an important project, their family life often suffers.
Send their spouses a card or better yet, a dinner or movie voucher. Let
them know you do not take the extra time for granted.
For more information about
Ken Chapman and Associates’ Leadership Development Programs, contact Ken
Chapman at 205.366.0265 or email Ken at
kchapman@leaderscode.com.
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