Boss, Manager, Owner, Foreman, Supervisor; if any of those titles preface your name, you are in a relationship with others – your employees. Libraries are full of management books on how to motivate, educate, discipline, and compensate employees which are a useful to refine your toolkit, but as a boss, looking at yourself is key to being a profitable employer.
Ask yourself, “Do you care whether or not your employees hate you?” You should! Studies have shown that happy employees are more productive and miss work less often. Unhappy employees can also make your work life less enjoyable. It’s human nature to want to be liked and no one wants the better part of their day spent with people who dislike them.
So how can you tell if your employees hate you? Not many people on the face of this earth are willing to walk up to their boss and say “I hate you and this is why…”, so here are a few tell-tale signs to clue you in.
One of the more obvious signs is when you arrive, your employees scatter faster than cockroaches to avoid you. When you pass someone in the hallway their eyes are busy staring at the floor. Nobody seems willing to look you in the eye.
It’s 8:55 am and the office is empty, everyone shows up when the day begins and five minutes before it’s time to leave there are anxious employees packing up their belongings to make a mad dash for the door at 5. That’s if they even come in at all; calling in sick has become more prevalent.
When you do try to have a conversation with them, the talk is small, and never involves their daily lives. Sure, you don’t want to get too personal but not knowing about big events in their lives (i.e. getting married, leaving town, resigning) could be a big sign they don’t want to know you.
Trying to talk to them about work is like talking to a three year old; they fidget in their seats and inch towards the door trying to leave at the end of any sentence. They no longer ask you for work when they are low and tasks that took little time before seem to take twice as long now.
If you are seeing these signs in your place of work it may be time to ask yourself if you may be the problem, your business depends on it!
