Tom Watts says that the
relationship you have with
your employees is the most
important thing you have in
business.
Your employees need to be
able to trust you and have confidence in you so that everyone
can work together to help the
business grow.
“If people don’t trust you,
they aren’t going to follow your
lead or take direction from
you,” says Watts, president of
Prudential Overall Supply Inc.
Watts has developed trusting
relationships with his 1,600
employees by keeping his
promises and making sure he
follows up on the things he has
committed to doing. Listening
to employees and then giving
them feedback also helps develop those trusting relationships,
he says.
Watts’ commitment to developing relationships and getting
to know his employees better
has helped Prudential, which
supplies uniforms and industrial
products to companies, reach
2007 sales of $133 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Watts about how to develop
trusting relationships with your
employees.
Create an open culture.
You do
have to go out of your way
and take the time and effort to
speak to as many individuals
as you can. Whenever we’re in
one of our plants, we try to
make sure that we talk to as
many people as we can.
We’ll walk the building and say,
‘Good morning or afternoon,’
and just basically talk to people
so that there’s somewhat of a
comfort level for people to be
able to talk to us. I also talk to
the local management and try to
get information about some of
our people, so when I am out on
the workshop floor or out with
our employees, I can say something that they can relate to —
either something about their personal life, a child or school or
something personal — try to
bring that up so that they at least
know I know a little bit about
them, and again, that breaks
down some of the barriers.
You have more open lines of
communication, you hear more
about situations that are going
on, if people are comfortable
enough to take the time and
communicate with you. You can
head off problems, and you can
hear their thoughts and concerns out in the field.
Make the right decision.
You have
to do what’s right, even if it may
be difficult, costly or unpopular
in some cases. When you do
certain things or make decisions
and communicate with everybody, you should give them the
reasons why, so people understand. If you do that, they’re
more inclined to accept and follow any rules and regulations or
decisions.
You have to be consistent. You
can’t change with the times.
Regardless of what the current
climate is or financial situation,
you have to maintain consistency at all costs. People know that
if this situation arises, you’re
going to react the same way no
matter who’s involved or what
the situation might be. It’s within
each individual; you either want
to be consistent and treat people
fairly all the time or you don’t.
