I saw a post about how bosses aren’t your friend...
... And to a degree this is true. BUT that does not mean we aren’t interested in caring about you as a person!
Employees are more than cogs in a machine. Or at least they should be!
A good boss recognizes individuals, their skills, accomplishments, and needs; and tailors the work environment to those.
GOOD employers CAN and DO care about their employees!
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Lemme tell you a little story:
My industry works 24/7. We don’t get the luxury of holidays off. I block time-off requests around the holidays.
This is because it saves me having to approve or deny requests off based on seniority. It doesn’t seem fair to me stick new team members with working holidays.
One year, an employee came up to me. They had a sick family member, FML and all that. They asked if they could have the night of Christmas Eve, and Christmas day off to be with their loved ones.
I couldn’t formally grant their request.
So I asked them to email me and I’d “see what I could do.”
When I made the December schedule I was able to give them the 24th, 25th, and 26th off.
I did this by putting myself on a double shift Christmas Day. (We don’t get double pay in our industry, so it wasn’t like I made extra $$$).
They had no idea I’d given them time off till the schedule went live.
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The point I’m trying to make is that your boss isn’t always going to be “the enemy,” and it’s not a “you versus them” world.
Treat your boss like a PERSON!, rather than a corporate grunt. We are people, and while some supervisors are shitbags, there are just as many who truly care about the people we manage.
Granted, we might not be friends, because that can undermine structure, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of caring.
A GOOD boss will want to see their people succeed, will fight tooth and nail to keep the employees who want to be there, and will work with their staff rather than against as much as possible.
Even now, my team might not know about times I go to corporate to speak well of them, but I try to make sure everyone feels rewarded and valued as an individual.
I try to give my team the best of me every day!
I only ask that, in return, my team give me their best as well.
I think that’s fair.
