Respectful Workplace Blog

As the economic downturn looms over the upcoming holiday season, companies are coming up with ever-more creative ways to thank their employees. Even if your budget can no longer afford to give hefty bonus checks or throw lavish parties, it’s still better to show at least some appreciation for a year of your employees’ hard work than to ignore it completely.

A recent Careerbuilder.com survey that asked 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals shows just where companies are cutting back on end of the year employee recognition:

One-third (34 percent) of employers planning to give holiday bonuses will pay out the same amounts or less this year than in past years

Of those employers decreasing bonuses, more than half (54 percent) plan to decrease by at least 10 percent

A whopping seventy-four percent of employers decreasing bonuses will lower amounts up to 25 percent

One-third (29 percent) of employers planning to give gifts to employees say they will spend the same or less this year than in the past

Seventeen percent of employers plan to cut back on the celebrations this holiday season

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I recently read an article in Reader’s Digest entitled, What If You Said Hello to Everyone In Your Path for a Month? that really made me stop and think. Could something as simple as saying “hello” more often make a difference to a workplace environment?

One of the conclusions from the article is that, nowadays, many people are taken aback when someone is friendly or simply utters a casual “hello”. I admit I am one of those people. Often we get too caught up in our cell phone conversations or are just too busy to acknowledge those who cross our path daily. And when we do hear someone unexpectedly say “hello”, it catches us off guard. But when you think about it, smiling and greeting someone takes so very little time and effort, but the benefits can be seen and felt almost immediately.

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Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend an overnight workshop which involved working with horses. Let me be clear, this was not a horse training or riding class, but rather a personal development workshop that incorporated horses into the process as co-facilitators.
 
What I ended up learning was not only a lot about myself, but also plenty about respect – giving and receiving it – from the horses. Establishing respect with a horse is not unlike the dance we undertake to garner the respect of another human being. Horses, like humans, respond to communication that involves both verbal and non-verbal cues to convey respect.
 
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One of the ongoing features that I am hoping to add to this blog involves highlighting organizations and individuals who are getting respect ‘right’. But in researching this angle, I have found very few positive examples of respect in the workplace. As I scour the search engines, I keep ending up with results that either emphasize issues of disrespect or outline specific policies intended to increase workplace respect. There is very little online that champions those who are already practicing respectful behaviors in the workplace.

So how do we know what respect in the workplace should look like?

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Last week I attended a lecture by Eddie Moore, Jr. at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, titled Inclusion, Equity, Privilege: Is Corporate America Making Progress in the 21st Century and held in conjunction with the current exhibition RACE: Are We So Different?

To begin his discussion, Moore appealed to the audience to find common ground in order to productively discuss race, whether in the workplace or in our personal lives, while acknowledging that each of us had had different life experiences. Moore led us through an exercise to find that starting place as a group.

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Recently, I posted about how we are much more alike than we are different, especially in terms of shared values. But now, science is confirming that even across racial lines, there are more similarities among us than differences.

A new exhibition, RACE: Are We So Different, which opened last week at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, explores the origins of race. Humans, as explained in the exhibition, are all basically the same, once the layers of skin are pulled back. Skin color variants in humans evolved only as protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

If race really is just skin deep then why does the subject stir such heated debates and cause tempers to flare?

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Maybe yes and maybe no.

Lately, there have been a number of blog posts either focusing on proposed legislation that would prevent workplace bullying or the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would expand Title VII to include sexual orientation as a protected class.

While this type of legislation is intended to eradicate inequality and promote inclusiveness in the workplace, we shouldn’t wait for its passage to act. Wouldn’t it be more effective for organizations to take a proactive stance before such legislation is passed to begin the dialogue among employees about the benefits of a respectful workplace?

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“The hot-button issues of politics can lead to inflamed tempers that can impede your productivity—and possibly, your progress.

Who do you think should be the next President of the U.S.? John McCain? Barack Obama? Jon Stewart? Regardless of who gets elected, there is no question that this is the most diverse and exciting campaign in many years.

Given what is at stake in the election and the historic nature of this year’s race, it is tempting to discuss the issue at work with those colleagues we’re accustomed to chatting with and hashing out so many things. Yet there are very good reasons why we shouldn’t.”

In a recent post on Anderson Cooper’s 360 Blog, Bruce Weinstein, Ph.D, the Ethics Guy for businessweek.com examined the ramifications of talking politics at work. He ranked politics, along with sex, money and religion as one of the most controversial topics in the workplace.

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Last month, I helped facilitate a workshop on respect in the workplace, leading a discussion on personal values and how they affect our professional behavior. Since our values significantly impact the decisions we make, it was important to have our participants spend some time reflecting on their own and the behaviors that would ideally correspond with them.
 
In that discussion, our participants defined a value both as something of importance and as a compass that guides us. They also discussed and came up with a brief list of possible universal values; those core ideals which would likely be just as important to individuals from any country our demographic in the world. While not validated beyond our discussion, our group’s list included:
 
1. Health
2. Family
3. Spirituality
4. Education
 
So what happens when we work with individuals who we believe are challenging or even attacking our personal values?  
 
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At the beginning of each Respectful Workplace program we lead, we ask participants to agree to 10 “Rules of  Engagement”.  We suggest these guidelines both to ensure a safe learning environment and  to assist each participant  to develop a heightened sense of empathy and awareness during the process.

When rereading the “rules” recently, I realized they could also be used as guidelines for any group or organizational meeting.

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