What does it mean to truly value your employees?

Are you valuing your employees like you should? It’s part of being able to run your business and keep your employees in order to avoid unnecessary turnover or unhappiness within your team. Most people think about this from time to time but being constantly bombarded with client matters can really throw this off track.

My Experience

I can only tell you from my personal experience and what I have learned, and I think that is the best way. I am never going to act like a disgruntled employee because I always take it as a learning experience. I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad boss that mistreated me, so I am honestly pretty lucky.  So, what can I tell you about making sure you are valuing your employees?

Giving complementary lunches is a nice treat for everyone and gifts for holidays too if you choose to do that. What I want to tell you about is that if you celebrate anyone on your team for any credentials they might have gotten, like good grades, certificates, degrees, etc., make sure you are doing that for everyone! Especially the paralegal that got good grades when completing the paralegal certification and pass the paralegal bar exam.

This might seem like a no brainer, but you as an attorney are super busy and it’s hard to think of everything. Now I don’t feel like a boss would intentionally celebrate someone’s achievements in the office and not do it for others, however, other people take this completely personal. This can lead to poor work ethics for those team members and of course if they have ever considered leaving for another firm you can bet your bottom dollar they are leaving as soon as possible.

To the employee that gets left out it simply feels like the attorney basically doesn’t want to recognize the achievements because they don’t want to give them raises or other benefits for their accomplishments in the legal field. Now, what I took from this particular experience for me was that I was meant for something better. I don’t look down on myself, I take things I’ve learned and move forward and up!

I am thankful to have had this experience because it taught me what not to do if I ever have employees in my new business. Most importantly I would have never started my own paralegal business had I not gone through this! I was on the fence about being a business owner in this new niche of paralegal work, but I’m so very glad for all my work experiences so that I finally had the courage to push myself.

Conclusion

I’m here to tell you this because I think it’s important to learn from other’s mistakes and not just our own. I read as much material as I can to prevent dumb mistakes in building my business and I feel that by sharing my own experience working in an office it will help attorneys be ahead of the game!

Sometimes we can still take preventative measures and things still happen, but being well informed of these things that might seem meaningless just puts you one step ahead of being aware. So don’t just celebrate certain kinds of achievements your employees have. If they make you aware of any achievements big or small, celebrate them all!