How Can You Create a Respectful Workplace Environment?

Dr. Purushothaman
December 5, 2013

A respectful workplace environment has a direct impact on employee productivity and employee retention. A respectful workplace environment is highly instrumental in preventing the chances of sexual harassment which is continually on the rise. Additionally, a respectful workplace is the apt solution to counter workplace politics and lobbying that demeans employee productivity. Imposing a respectful workplace environment is vital, especially when you have new hires in your company. It is vital to teach the new employees about the specific workplace rules so that the existing work culture is not disrupted.

A strict workplace regulation or a thorough training on respectful workplace environment becomes imperative when your employees seem to stray off and break workplace rules to suite their conveniences. Some of your employees are victims of sexual harassment and few others are silent spectators thinking this to be a general mode of workplace behavior. It's time you take charge of the situation and train your employees in the art of protesting against the diseased ideals of the workplace sexual harassers.

Role of Workshops and Motivational Speakers in Effecting a Respectful Workplace:

Thorough training sessions and workshops to fight sexual harassment, workplace politics and verbal workplace abuse at regular intervals are vital. Most people consider workplace harassment trainings as boring speech sessions. But it necessarily doesn't have to be like that. With an expert motivational speaker at hand your employees will surely enjoy the training sessions while being motivated to fight workplace politics and harassment actively.

Meanings and Indications of Body Language at Workplace:

A great mode of increasing awareness about workplace politics, sexual harassment and implementing a respectful workplace ambiance is training on body language. Body language training sessions aptly train people to judge and analyze each other's body language, thus preventing them from giving out wrong messages to their colleagues of the opposite gender. These training sessions are highly instrumental in promoting knowledge and understanding about present day business etiquettes where people need to treat each other as equals and not discriminate on the basis of gender.

Role of a Politically Sound Workplace Ambiance:

Maintaining a politically sound work culture and environment is a vital objective that supports the implementation of a respectful workplace. Most workplace setups need to be modified and employees need to be trained in maintaining politically correct language and terminology. Politically incorrect terms reflecting racial or gender discrimination can in fact, add to workplace politics and make the workplace ambiance a hostile one.

It is always a healthy practice to discourage employees from cracking indecent jokes at the workplace as that erodes the thin line of respect between employees in the workplace paving the way for incidents of sexual harassments and verbal abuse in the near future. Even in office chats sharing of indecent jokes should be discouraged to prevent disruption of a healthy workplace environment.

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