A lack of respect in your administrative personnel and employees towards each other leads to the corrosion of teamwork and a higher turnover rate. Finding creative solutions to this problem results in higher morale and contentment for all employees. A feeling of contentment in the workplace leads to higher employee retention rates, and this is a positive benefit for everyone!
Stress and Discontentment in the Workplace
Some of the most common causes of stressOpens a new window and discontentment in the workplace include bullying, harassment and poor working relationships that make the employee feel isolated.
These conflicts can lead to team rivalry, decreases in productivity, more workers calling in sick, smaller attendance at company social events, low morale, decreased motivation and an increase in grievances overall.
Training Your Employees
Invest in your company by introducing training that teaches people in leadership roles how to model respect for their employees. If the leaders show respect for each other and expect the same of each and every employee, everyone will be happier.
You can do the training in a company-wide meeting or break the training into departmental meetings. You may hire an outside company to teach these tools to your leaders and employees. You can also send your administrative or human resource personnel to workshops so that they can teach the employees these interpersonal skills. These informative courses will be quite effective in preventing workplace harassment.
Unresolved conflicts and unpunished harassment in your company can escalateOpens a new window , resulting in levels of abuse that may eventually lead to illegal harassment. Making it clear to your administrative personnel and employees that your company practices zero tolerance for such behavior will only create positive results when you follow through with disciplinary actions.
During the training make sure that all of the employees are aware of what is classified as disrespectful — and therefore unacceptableOpens a new window — behavior. This includes:
- Gossip.
- Cutting remarks.
- Racial slurs.
- Offensive or crude jokes.
- Intimidating behavior, such as throwing an ink pen across the room in anger.
- Inappropriate physical contact.
- Any disruptive behavior that interferes with the work or performance of another employee.
Reinforce this training by having refresher courses for everyone each year. Also, have a video of the training courses available for new hires to watch as a part of the on-boarding process.
Personal Actions
During the training, utilize role-playing, video, skits or whatever creative means you can obtain to showcase what is classified as disrespect, workplace abuse or harassment. Many people are simply ignorant of how seemingly innocuous gossip, cutting remarks said in jest or making fun of someone can be perceived negatively by another individual.
As an educational tool, have some gregarious employees act out a skit where someone makes a cutting remark to another individual simply to lighten the general mood. The harassed individual can reply with words like, “When you do that, it makes me feel incompetent, of no value, or foolish.†Or the person can say, “When you say something like that, what I’m hearing is that you think I am not as smart as you, or as skilled as you.â€
Workplace Solutions
Maybe the work environment in your company has been erratic as far as being respectful to all employees. That doesn’t mean that change is impossible. The first step in ensuring that all employees know that this type of behavior will no longer be tolerated is to have everyone sign a paper stating that he or she is aware that this is the new policy and it will go into effect immediately.
The second, and often the most difficult step, is to enforce the new rules. Examples of some wise ways enforcement can be implemented are:
- Have a safe and confidential manner for the employee to voice a complaint.
- Address the complaint by hearing both sides of the story, and those of any witnesses to the disrespectful behavior. Hire an impartial mediator to hear both sides of the issue, if this is possible. If not, ask a leader from a different department to mediate for the parties involved.
- Encourage both parties not to point fingers and to use words like, “When you said or did that, I felt like…†Advise employees on both sides that there is to be no retaliation.
- Issue a warning to the employee who displayed disrespectful behavior. Have him or her sign a document stating that he or she understands exactly what was considered unacceptable behavior
- Make it clear that if another disrespectful incident occurs, the employee will be suspended without pay for two weeks, or some other disciplinary action that is agreed upon by administrative personnel.
- If another occurrence happens, follow through with terminating the employee or whatever disciplinary action is agreed upon.
Respect in the workplace fosters an atmosphere of trustOpens a new window among leaders and employees alike. This trust results in a protective boundary against external factors that can result in the demise of a company weakened by low morale and discontented employees. These external factors include such things as a slow economy, the ever-changing face of technology and fierce competitiveness in the business world today.