Why and How to Treat Your Employees like Your Clients (or Better!)
Image credit: Pavel Danilyuk
A while back, I wrote an article about how employees should approach their relationship with their bosses as they would approach a client relationship.
I’d gotten the idea for the article after dinner with a few friends who’d expressed frustration in navigating their interactions with their bosses. Reframing the relationships with the “client” lens, as we did over dessert, brought about a few a-ha moments.
When I wrote that article, I assumed that most bosses would already know to treat their employees as clients.
After all, I’d been a boss, not an employee, for several years at that point. From my vantage point as an employer with limited insight into the operations of other organizations, I often forget that my perspective and approach aren’t the ones all bosses take.
However, recent stories in the media about companies laying off hundreds of people via mass videoconferences have brought back memories of recent and not-so-recent horror stories recounted by friends about the bad bosses they’ve experienced during their careers.
These stories and memory flashbacks have recalled to me the earlier article I wrote. I’ve realized: A lot of bosses don’t get it, do they?
For a team to truly achieve its potential, bosses need to treat employees like clients in turn.
I won’t pretend that I haven’t made my share of employee-relations mistakes over the years. That I’ve never let the edge of my stress show in ways that I shouldn’t have or that I’ve always navigated every situation involving employees with aplomb—because I sure have and I sure as heck haven’t.
I’ve learned a lot over the years, and a lot of it the hard way.
Yet I’ve always tried my best, even when I woefully fell short. I think I improved over the years of having employees. Each time I did something the wrong way, I tried to learn from it so that I could try to prevent it happening again.
Excellent Employees aren’t Everywhere
If you have the common boss’ perspective that employees are expendable resources, whether in general or just in your particular space, think again.
Whether you hear that a given market has few searching employees (an “employee’s market”) or few searching employers (an “employer’s market”), know that what the pundits say on this topic has zero value to your operations.
An eternal truth, no matter the market: The market for the right talent for your needs will never have enough people in it. Ever.
You will always need to fight for people with the skills, career trajectories, work styles, attitudes, approaches, schedules, and beyond that suit any given position’s needs—not to mention the overall needs of the team, the department, and the company.
Therefore, you must do everything possible to nurture and keep the right-for-you people that you do manage to find and to hire for as long as it makes sense for both employee and employer to work together. (After all, rarely does a company or its available roles fit every employee forever, and vice versa. At some point, one party or the other—or both—will decide to make a change.)
And only when you do will you succeed in attracting more of the right people.
The Employee-Employer Relationship and Expectations
When I say that bosses should treat employees as clients, what do I mean?
First, let’s map the expectations or, as some of us in the client-services world think of it, the scope of work and requirements for an employer-employee relationship to proceed efficiently and effectively on both sides.
Just as you have hired your employees, your employees have hired you (as their boss) and the company (as their employer). You have expectations, often outlined in the job description, explaining what you want the person in a role to do. In exchange for this work, in addition to a fair salary and reasonable benefits, employees want to have opportunities to do good work, to advance their skills and their careers, to feel appreciated and productive as part of the larger team, and to feel that their needs and expectations are by and large fulfilled by their jobs.
Of course, for every employer and for every employee, you’ll find nuances in these broad strokes. Adjust accordingly.
Best Practices for Treating Employees as Clients
So how do you treat your employees like you treat your clients? In a practical sense, what do I mean?
As the boss, you must keep your employees’ expectations in mind (as you do your clients’) and proceed using your best client-services best practices, adapted in this case to the employee-as-client:
Provide clear direction: What do you expect employees to do, how do you want them to do it, and how will you measure their success? Most client projects start by establishing these parameters. Your relationship with your employees should do the same. Rarely do people go into work every day to fail. People want to feel useful and productive, especially in something that takes a large chunk of their waking hours (and lives). Therefore, explain what “useful” and “productive” will mean to you. As they do their work, give your employees clear and detailed feedback, all framed in the perspective that you know they want to adjust, learn, and grow—not as though you see them as stupid or lazy. And when your employees adjust, learn, and grow, acknowledge that they have done so. How else will they know that they’ve made progress, that you’ve noticed, and that you appreciate them?
Treat them with respect: You shouldn’t talk down to your clients or treat them as “necessary evils.” Nor should you treat your employees this way. Treat your team members as equals in how you speak to them, how you guide their work, and how you comport yourself with them. Remember their names. (I shouldn’t have to say this, and yet…) Do not interrupt them when they speak. Do not take credit for their work. Do not talk about them behind their backs with other members of the team.
Don’t waste their time: Time and energy are not unlimited resources. Just as you try to respect the time and priorities of your clients, you should take care with how you use the time of your employees. Don’t lazily toss things at employees—especially things outside their job descriptions—because you’d rather not do it yourself. Don’t ask them to work incredibly long hours in perpetuity. (Hey, occasional emergencies happen, and people rise to the occasion. However, if your organization has weekly or even daily emergencies, you should address the root causes—not simply force everyone to work longer hours.) Further, you should not expect employees to give you open access twenty-four hours of the day, seven days a week, outside of rare urgencies. (Emphasis, again, on “rare.”) If you want your employees to produce quality output, you must give them the time needed to refresh, regenerate, and focus on other things in their off time.
Listen to them: If an employee respects and trusts you enough to bring you’re their thoughts or their concerns, pay attention. Coming to the boss with an idea, suggestion, or request is not an easy thing for anyone to do. This does not mean you accommodate every request, but it does mean you should give them the floor and the consideration to explain their positions. After all, you hired them and you work with them because you appreciate them—so you should feel honored that they’ve chosen to bring you a fresh perspective. If you need more time to process the idea or suggestion, ask for that time—yet always reconnect with the employee with a true response on the timeline you promise.
Understand and further their professional objectives: That this person has chosen to spend a chunk of their career working with you? It’s an honor. Recognizing that they have a bigger picture in mind—or could use experienced help in refining their thoughts for their career—try to understand where they want to go and what they want to do and help them map a plan toward achieving their objectives within your organization until they move on to their next roles. If you’ve reached the boss level, you likely have experience and perspective that can help them continue to advance. Offering that is one of your responsibilities as an executive to your team.
Remember that you aren’t friends: Just as you always maintain a slight reserve with client relationships, remember that you and your employees work together for shared professional objectives—and to support each other in your individual career advancement, too. You are not friends, even if you are friendly. Do not pry into their personal lives. If they share something with you of their own volition, that’s a great honor. But don’t assume that they’ve then given you license to dig deeper, turn into their therapist, or judge what they told you. Stay neutral. Revisit my point above about showing respect and recognizing that your employees are multifaceted individuals who live in worlds other than the work world they share with you, and that these universes have boundaries to respect.
Accommodate when possible: If a client makes a request for an accommodation or a change and you can grant the request without undue difficulty or problem or real compromise to the success and quality of the work—you do it. Take the same approach with your employees. If an employee needs an accommodation or has a request, give the ask genuine consideration and, whenever possible, grant it. If you value this person as a collaborator—just as you value your clients—why wouldn’t you say yes? So many executives I know seem to believe that saying “yes” to an employee request means they’ve lost something—their authority, maybe?—rather having advanced further down the path of doing great work together in the best way for everyone.
The above tips just reveal the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improved employer-employee relationships. In general, when it comes to treating your employees as your clients, think about how you approach client work and apply that approach with you team.
When clients hire you, how do you ensure you achieve their objectives and surpass their expectations—all while satisfying your own?
With Authority Comes Serious Responsibility
All this assumes that you treat your clients as valuable partners in mutual success. (As you should.)
Alas, I know all of us can list several customer-service examples we’ve personally experienced that didn’t live up to this standard.
Establishing a good workplace means establishing a workplace of respect and mutual success. While employees play a significant role in creating a great place to work, the people who have the authority to set the tone and lead the way—and who can enforce the standards to see they really happen—are the bosses.
If that’s you, that’s a serious responsibility. And a responsibility to take seriously.