Forget how your employees feel about you or your company – how do they feel about themselves?
Many organizations worry about how employees feel about their management, their owners and their companies, and what they might say about them about it in public. The paranoia is so high that the number non-disparagement agreements that employees are asked to sign is at an all time high – with some companies going as far as making people sign non-disparagement agreements that cover their entire family.
Focusing on controlling what employees might say about you in public is a sure road to killing any possible enthusiasm and passion around your company, its products and its management. What companies should do instead is to focus on figuring out how employees feel about themselves in the context of being employed with the company. If you can help employees feel good about themselves, then they will automatically feel good about you and your company, and you would never need non-disparagement agreements.
Just like you cannot control what your customers say about you, you cannot control what employees will say about you either. In fact you should take a totally different tack – encourage your employees to talk about you, and deal with the good and the bad that comes out of that.
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March 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Good point. Sometimes, being too worried about what your employees might say about you or the company can even lead you to controlling them or keeping them on a tight leash. This will only turn out negatively for you.