Easy Ways to Show Your Employees You Love Them

Why should I want my employer to 'love' me? There are several things I want from my employer, but none of them are anywhere near 'love' and especially not the sort of 'love' that this hints at.

Primarily, I want my employer to provide a structure within which I can do my work with a minimum of hassle. I want to be paid well and regularly. I want no surprises when it comes to health-care or other benefits. I want, within reason, to be able to put my job aside for personal matters that I deem more important - we usually call this 'personal leave' in the US. I want a comfortable, arms-length working relationship where I can work hard as needed to get a job done and then leave.

I do NOT want my employer actively trying to become my friend. I do NOT want my employer asking me to share my taste in music with the rest of the office, nor do I care about everybody else's tastes. I do NOT want "team-building" exercises or structured activities which are meant to help me work better with people. I definitely don't want my employer to 'love' me. To hell with that.

I would disagree with #5 on that list. In my experience a request from a boss will most likely be misinterpreted (to some degree at least) as an attempt to spy on you.

Also, many people are starting to learn that keeping your professional and personal networks separate is a good thing so having a blanket statement of "boss's should friend employees" is a little misguided.

In either case it will create an unnecessarily dilemma for the employee. And its worth noting that there is a growing list of people who have lost their jobs because of Facebook.

The list is quite revealing - it gives away some of the "command and control" tendencies in some (US?) businesses.

Some of the suggestions are astonishing (I work in Europe and can't conceive of a non-customer facing/low security role where personal phones are, or even should, be banned).

Others are appallingly cheesy, friending your employees on Facebook, really?

What about the ones that I personally really appreciate:

1. Personal recognition from management for work well done

And I don't mean "employee of the month" plaques - more a senior stakeholder that pops by with the mission to shake my hand and mention why the work was important for our shared business goals.

2. Acknowledgement of serious commitment to shared goals

Even better is the PA to the CEO who wanders through the building after the early shutdown time on Christmas Eve or other local equivalent to find out who's still working, and comes back with a small gift hamper full of little items like gourmet jam, already wrapped with easy-remove numbered stickers and a master list of the contents, to take the stress out of last-minute shopping. Honestly, I would have taken a 20% paycut from them after that with a smile.

3. Flexibility flexibility flexibility

Most of my work experience has been in organisations that ask for flexibility from staff - illegal (only in parts of the EU!) numbers of hours to be worked during crunches, "temporary" incomplete or unfit-for-purpose work process changes, spontaneous and badly thought through changes of focus and priority to keep the financial markets happy etc.

I really appreciate the flexibility right back: a parent suffering terminal illness on the other side of the world demands significant blocks of time away from project activities. I was extremely gratified that my direct HR line manager and program leads let me know that they'd move heaven and earth to make it possible. I worked while I was away to keep things on track and committed to stay on board for significantly longer than I'd planned.

4. Fair pay for hard work

Enough said.

5. A little thought about impacts of business decisions

Sometimes there are problems. You need to fly out at short notice and it may be that you'll be on the road for a month or two. This isn't part of your job description.

What really worked for me was when my boss asked about the impact on my home life. And when HR asked me whether to send flowers every Friday on my behalf to my spouse. And our local logistics people offered their help if we needed someone to be at home for things like visits from the gas company.

These things cost very little, are genuine and not cheesy and are not sensible removals of dumb authoritarianism.

This is how you show your employees that you value them and their commitment to your shared goals.

A single easy way to show your employees you love them: don't actively try to interfere with their lives or attach unnecessary restrictions on their work patterns.

I'll only comment on one specific suggestion: The varied music taste of your staff will no doubt surprise you.

Ok, my playlist consists of Yngwie Malmsteen, Rammstein and NIN. Another employee's playlist consists of Dido and Celine Dion. This is going to end well.

Every employee should blog? The horror. The author needs to keep in mind:

1. Not everyone is an extrovert 2. Not everyone philosophizes about his job 3. There are tons of companies doing fine without a blog - and they don't blog about it ;)

In the tech world, if blocking social networks means your employees can't access social networks, it means you've hired the wrong employees.

I'd add "2+ monitors for all knowledge-workers and above" to that list.

#1 - Agreed. #2 - Mandate a set of browsers if you work in a tech company that produces a web app, otherwise in a large enterprise you'll have a lot of security concerns and the bearded suspenders in IT will lunch you. #3 - Give parents the opportunity to shirk work and burden their childless colleagues? Awesome idea. If you make #3 a company-wide policy for everyone, you'll make redundant the other nine items in this post. #4 - Only works with serious, well-trained and educated employees. If you have a ban on them in the first place, aside from security reasons, you're not working in a place that puts the employee ahead of anything. #5 - You're out of your mind. #6 - Will be used with less frequency as a normal social network but can easily be used to facilitate offline communication, but also subjected to the same hierarchy forces found in the org chart. Not a long-term solution. #7 - This only works if you have a small group of people with similar interests. Can easily become a distraction. #8 - I'm not child, don't treat me like one by suggesting I engage in games that have hidden morality lessons. #9 - Great, phone and email from random recruiters will increase tenfold. #10 - Great if you can get the c-level to think that they don't have all the answers. Also, as soon as tickets pile up, they'll assign handling it to the IT manage it via HR and they'll treat it like yet another ticketing system.

Overall, I see these recs as 2-3 out of 7.