A few weeks ago, at an event for attorneys, someone made an offhanded comment about the value of making people feel better. She said: doctors with better bedside manner have fewer lawsuits.
And it’s true, they do. This is one of many chicken-or-the-egg situations I feel you encounter in life. Are doctors with better bedside manner better doctors? Or is it just perception? I would bet it is just perception. Because I have seen it in the workplace. Two employers treat their employees otherwise identically, but one has many more issues, including EEOC charges, at every turn, even for employees who voluntarily quit. Why? Because one employer makes their employees feel better about working there, even during terminations, while the other does not.
Another example: Target and Walmart. People think poorly of Walmart for many reasons, including the lawsuits they keep getting. But they aren’t the only company that gets sued, and the truth is racial and sexual disparity in pay exist in every industry.
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Furthermore, Target isn’t perfect (even though they seem to have the full support of atheists and people who don’t care about the gender of other people in a public restroom). They have had their share of black eyes.
But if you ask people on the street what they think of Walmart as a retailer, and what they think of Target, you will get two very different responses for these retailers.
What can an employer learn from this phenomenon? Bedside manner is incredibly important, for more than just doctors. And what can an employer do to take advantage of this phenomenon? Here are my suggestions:
1. Make your employees feel important. Doctors with good bedside manner make the patient feel they have their full attention during the (often very short) time they have with them. This makes the patient feel important. What is a practical way that an employer can do this? Drop the silly platitudes (pro tip: “Chief Happiness Officer” does nothing for your actual workplace happiness) and actually give benefits that matter to employees. Do you expect long hours? How about making employees’ lives easier outside of the office? Something I’ve seen that employees at one company enjoyed: buying out time at a nearby gym to give employees an opportunity to work out. No competition for that elliptical!
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2. Listen to your employees. Patients gave high ratings to doctors who listen. Curiously, this is part of our training for managers and HR professionals for successfully implementing anti-harassment policies. We tell them that there are key issues and phrases to pay attention to, but they often don’t come out immediately. Employees want to feel like they matter. Feeling like they matter can often mean more than almost anything in the workplace. Managers should be trained to actively listen to employees, for more than a Faragher-Ellerth defense.
3. Give good feedback. Doctors who are thoughtful about what they say have better bedside manner. For employers, this translates to feedback. Good feedback is essential to being a good employer, but often it isn’t focused on. Formal review is a time of dread instead of a time of growth. I personally am not a fan of an annual or semi-annual review; I think that for feedback to matter, it needs to be more timely. Just like doctors need to be continually saying, with their words and body language, the right thing to each patient for the bedside manner to be authentic and matter, so an employer needs to be giving good, timely feedback to employees.
Intentionality and being mindful of perception is key to being truly good at anything. If you are a doctor, it translates into fewer lawsuits over the course of your career, all things being equal. If you are an employer, being intentional about the workplace environment is key to being a top place to work and low turnover (though, like Target, you will never be the best for everyone). And much like it does for doctors, being intentional hits your bottom line. Low employee turnover and avoiding lawsuits has real value to a company.
Being a good employer is good for business.
Beth Robinson lives in Denver and is a business law attorney and employment law guru. She practices at Fortis Law Partners. You can reach her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @HLSinDenver.