Business leaders can play
an important role in their
employees’ lives in the type of work environment
they provide for them, says
Lillian Roberts.
The president and owner of
Business Cards Tomorrow
Pompano Beach says that how
you treat employees at work
filters down to their interactions with family and friends.
“You recognize people as
individuals, not necessarily
what their title is or what their
job function is, but first and
foremost, you recognize them
as human beings,” says
Roberts of the 45-employee
company, part of T.K.O.
Distributors Inc. that does
business as Business Cards
Tomorrow.
Creating that environment
has helped grow the printing
company to 2007 revenue of
about $5 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Roberts about how to value
and respect your employees to
create an environment for
growth.
Q. How do you create an
environment where employees
are treated as individuals?
It’s a lot of little things. It’s
things that I started out in the
beginning. We recognized their
birthdays — when we were a
small company, we’d have a
birthday cake for each individual person.
Today, we do $10 for lunch.
It sounds like nothing, but it’s
appreciating that person and
recognizing their day.
I would tell other leaders to
think about how the decisions
they make and how they treat
their employees go far beyond the walls of the business and
the eight hours of employment for the day. If they’re a
leader who blows up at the
slightest thing, they’re teaching their employees that it’s
OK to do that.
Be patient, and know that
they’re affecting more than
just that employee when
they’re talking to that employee; they’re affecting that whole
person’s circle of people.
You can either manage by
fear or manage out of love. I
manage out of love. If you
need to sit down with somebody about something and it
needs to be discussed or
counseled, you don’t
do that in an open
environment where
you yell at them or
belittle them or try to
push them into doing
their job faster or better by embarrassing
them.
It means that you sit
down and have a talk
with them, you address
them as a human being,
and you help them to
have the tools that they
need to do a better job.
