Value - Do you show your staff how much you value them?

One thing I really believe is universal among those of us who work for other people is the desire to be valued by the organization, to be considered valuable.  I really don't know more than one or two people who don't want to do their best work, who don't care if their work isn't up to par. I think we all really want to do good work and to have that work be valued. Don't we all want to feel needed?

Managers need to ask themselves if they show their staff members how valued they are. There are a lot of negatives in the workplace that can be completely erased by showing employees that they are important to the organization, that their contributions are significant, that they are needed.

This is so easy to accomplish. "Thank you" is simple to say, and a sincere thanks, given often and sometimes paired with a little token of recognition (try saying it in front of a group of people) can do a lot to boost employee morale. So can a pat on the back, a "good job", or "Wow, that's a great idea!"  I know how I feel when I hear those words. In fact, I remember my last boss calling me into his office, out of the  blue, and telling me that I was doing a good job and that he was tickled pink that I was working for him (that is a direct quote - tickled pink - wow). He did something like this at least once every six months, and it made such a difference in how I viewed my workplace. It made me want to work harder, to earn such a bold statement of my worth to the unit. Those were very powerful words, a very powerful incentive to try to be better than I was. Being told that I was impressing him, that he was happy to have hired me, that I was working out better than he could have hoped for, intoxicating words, I can't even describe how that made me feel.

I always tried hard to make sure the people who did a great job knew they had done so. I made it a point to talk to as many of the staff I supervised as I could every single day, just to see how they were doing, to check if there were barriers to them getting their jobs done, and to say "thanks for making my job so easy". If I had a sincere reason to say that, I made sure to do so. Sometimes supervisors get so caught up in the negative things, the little details that don't really matter, that they forget the basics of human interaction. Please and thank you really are magic words.