Are You Treating Your Hired Help Like “The Hired Help”?

Posted on January 20, 2011

Hey, there. I’m Laura Roeder, and today I want to ask you are you treating your hired help like the hired help?

Here is what I mean. My mom has this phrase which she says. I don’t know if other people say this or my mom just made it up, you never know with my mom, but she’ll sometimes say that someone treated someone like the hired help. Like she has this story about how my grandpa was raised by people who weren’t his family and how instead of treating him like family, they treated him like the hired help.

So treating someone like the hired help is not a good thing. Treating someone like the hired help means that you view them as beneath you instead of having an equal relationship with them. You just give them orders, right? And a lot of people treat their hired help like the hired help, and then they’re surprised when they have problems or when things don’t go well or they’re not getting the kind of performance that they want from their independent contractors or from their employees.

And what I would like to offer is that you don’t want to treat your hired help like the hired help. You want to treat them like the good old golden rule, right? You want to treat them how you would want to be treated. You want to be friendly. You want to be kind. You want to be nice. You want to have a respectful relationship. You want to speak to them the way that you would like to be spoken to.

I think a lot of us hire people and we just expect them to be little working robots, right? We just expect to be able to put in an order and have the exact work we want come out. That’s part of it, right? You give people assignments and they do them. Of course that’s part of work, but they’re also humans like you are and you want to interact with them just like you would other humans that you like to have positive relationships with.

Again, it’s the good old golden rule. Treat people how you would like to be treated and it especially applies if you want to have great relationships with the people that you work with and the people that work for you. So don’t treat your hired help like the hired help.

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5 Responses to “Are You Treating Your Hired Help Like “The Hired Help”?”

Pat
Jan 20, 2011

OMG! this had me rolling on the floor LOL.. your mom came up with the right saying.. I usually “dont treat people like cinderella” but its all the same.
Thanks for the laugh and the insight
TrafficColeman
Jan 20, 2011

Treat people with respect and they will go all out for you..we all work together even though I have to pay for your time..

Nice interview with Andrew

BTW Laura..Can you can contact me on my contact page..Its very important..I need your help.

“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Andy Fogarty
Jan 20, 2011

Oh man, I was just talking with Jill about this yesterday. We used to think that we were just unusually blessed with fantastic employees. The reality was we legitimately cared about them and treated them like we would treat any of our friends (we just paid a lot more ).

I’d also add that sometimes we as online business owners need to go a little further to ensure our folks are doing ok. I hate to admit it, but when your team is in 2 other parts of the globe, it’s easy to quickly give assignments and run.

We started doing weekly “virtual staff meetings” which are usually less about work and more about hanging out for a bit.
Sarah
Jan 20, 2011

Andy, we do those too and it helps us all stay connected, for sure! And we get together in person at least once a year.

Another thing to always remember…don’t treat any assistant as “just an assistant” Many times, they hold the keys to the doors!

I just loved Laura’s simple yet very important message (and reminder!) in this video!
Phil Simon
Jan 21, 2011

So true. You have to treat employees, vendors, consultants, and contractors as equals–or more than equals. This really came across in researching The New Small and I’m glad that there are others who get this.