By Debora Flora
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Labor Day is comfortably predictable. It arrives on the first Monday in September, waving a white flag ahead of summer’s final lap. It extends the weekend to three days and emphasizes the dignity, sacrifices and successes of workers.
National Boss/Employee Exchange Day follows exactly one week later. It is not a national holiday, but an exercise in gaining perspective, starting conversations and inspiring shared respect.
Workers born between 1980 and 1996 – the millennials – comprise the largest portion of today’s workforce. When pollsters ask them what they want beyond compensation, their greatest desires are growth opportunities, having a sense of purpose, receiving constructive feedback and speaking openly about ideas and problems. All are elements of workplace respect.
Nonetheless, Gallup, an analytics and advisory firm to more than 4,000 organizations, says only 37% of employees feel respected at work. It’s the lowest satisfaction number recorded since Gallup started taking this poll in 2018.
Managers, too, desire respect in the workplace. Maintaining professional relations at work is a personal achievement. These days, it also is an employee retention tool.
Respect is earned, not given. So we’ve been told. At times, earning respect can be uncomfortable and unpredictable.
Baby Boomers, including my late father, also sought respect. Dad was a career laborer who grew up working on his grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania. After high school, he delivered soft drinks and other goods to businesses. When my parents moved here in the mid-1960s, he landed a temporary job at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. After that, he was a watchman at old Girard Lake.
Dad was hired in 1969 at ITT Grinnell on Dana Street in Warren, where custom and specially fabricated pipes and plates were produced for petrochemical, shipbuilding, power plant and defense industry clients. Grinnell was a major manufacturer before it closed in 1985. It reached its peak employment level of 800 during the 1950s. I fondly remember attending annual company picnics at Geauga Lake and Conneaut Lake Park amusement parks.
Our family ritual was typical of many families during my childhood. We ate dinner after Dad came home from his daytime shift. Work and school were frequent topics of conversation.
One of Dad’s stories lingers with me. He talked about days when the managers made their rounds in the warehouse, and how many workers wanted to have lengthy, friendly conversations with them. It was a diversion from the day’s work for them, but not him.
His tough-guy persona was well honed, having grown up in a household that didn’t achieve middle-class status during the booming 1950s economy. He relocated here in search of opportunities that were unavailable in his hometown. He wanted to be known as reliable, and so he stayed focused on his work.
The point of his story was this: When the bosses wanted an assessment of warehouse operations, they sought his input. They relied on his clear, concise, honest assessments. He took pride in that. I was an elementary school student, receiving a kitchen-table lesson about prioritizing respect over popularity.
After working at Grinnell for a decade, Dad was elevated to group leader – one who implements management’s goals within a team of employees. When he received the Employee of the Month Award in 1984, a manager cited his “dedicated, conscientious and cooperative attitude” as he responded to needs within the company’s manufacturing departments.
Receiving such recognition after 15 years in the same workplace may seem indefensible to millennials. Promotions and accolades may be symbols of respect, but they follow the attainment of interpersonal respect, as my father did. Relationships in any setting develop over time, in unknown quantities of time.
Whether you are an associate or executive, cultivating a respectful workplace is a shared responsibility. Respect takes root where honest dialogue is encouraged, and participants are fully listening. It grows where constructive criticism is the norm and withers amid personal attacks. It may blossom in collaborative settings or freeze when only senior leadership can make decisions. It can be damaged when favoritism is shown, despite performance.
Summer only lasts for a season. National Boss/Employee Exchange Day is a one-day observance. Earning respect is perpetual.