At Boss Builders, we always stress that one of the key responsibilities of The Boss is to “protect the house.” This involves being aware of safety hazards, HR/EEO violations, and customer and company reputation problems. A fourth area though is around your company’s values.
Values are the written norms that dictate how we should behave around each other. Some companies have them publicized while others have them written on a wall somewhere and never talk about them. Many companies don’t even have them.
I believe every company should have them. Why?
- How do you handle it when somebody brings a bad attitude to work?
- What do you do when an employee gets all riled up about politics during the workday?
- What are your options when one of your team insists on pushing their religious beliefs on people?
- What happens when an employee habitually abuses liberal time-off policies?
Simple: Use the phrase “We don’t do that here.”
Values cover behaviors that are not helpful and yet are not covered in a policy manual. If you can’t seem to quantify a behavior that’s not helpful, match it against your values. Here’s an example:
- Employee (let’s call him Albert): “All you snowflakes must be happy now that the Betsy Ross flag was pulled from Nike shoes.”
- You (The Boss): “Albert, one of our values is Respect and what you said is not respectful. We don’t do that here at XYZ company.”
See, it’s just that simple. What Albert said would offend at least half of your employees and because RESPECT is a value, YOU enforce it with that simple sentence.
And, if Albert refuses, now he’s disobeying your request which might be insubordination and that just might be a policy manual issue.
Remember, politics, religion, personal baggage, etc. don’t belong at work. For crying out loud you just have to focus for eight hours a day. Come to work, do your job, be a good human, and go home. If you’re The Boss, keep this process moving along. Live your values and enforce your values. It’s the right thing to do.