You Respect is not just an Aretha Franklin song. It’s the glue that holds teams together.
Sure, everybody likes to work in a respectful environment. But giving everybody a “nice” place to work might not capture the attention of your management team. Talking about the bottom line, on the other hand, tends to capture that attention—and a disrespectful work environment can create a constant flow of cash straight out the door.
Here are some sobering numbers: Sixty-three percent of new hires who do not feel treated with respect intend to leave within two years. The workplace they leave behind is stuck hiring and training new staff—a major drain on resources. Across all industries, an average of 46 percent of new hires leave their jobs within the first year for one reason or another. That’s a disaster for them and for the company that hired and trained them, and now must replace and retrain.
So some of those who feel disrespected don’t actually end up leaving. But do you really want them to stay? Don’t think so. Feeling disrespected by colleagues or management is a major factor in employee disengagement. It results in a workplace full of sleepwalkers, clock watchers, and complainers.
As my grandmother used to say, “A fish rots from the head down.” If a department manager treats his people like garbage, there’s a pretty good chance he’s being treated that way by his own supervisor, and so on, all the way up to the head of the organization. The reverse is true as well. A CEO who treats his executive team respectfully is likely to find that they pay that respect forward, and you end up with a workplace steeped in respect.
That said, it doesn’t have to come from the top. Anyone at any point in the org chart can declare a “no disrespect zone” between themselves and the people they work with on a daily basis. You can be an example of someone who always treats teammates and your management with respect and goes out of the way to be respectful to new team members.
It always goes back to that Golden Rule, an ethical idea so powerful it’s in every moral system in the world: treat others as you would like to be treated. It’s the human thing to do.