Hello!
In an effort to try to quantify all the reasons that I'm miserable and resentful at work I was searching for lists of reasonable expectations that employees should have of their employers and was getting nowhere.
I think that's part of the problem. I found lists of expectations from employers and lists of expectations of good managers but no list of expectations that employees have of employers.
I think one should be made so I'm going to give it a shot.
Here are the 10 (12 I guess) employer commandments that I could come up with off the top of my head.
- Thou shalt pay a living wage to all employees. That wage shall be established by determining the cost of living in most expensive area that your employees live and work and provided to all employees.
- Thou shalt increase that pay at regular intervals and additionally, adjust it based on inflation
- Thou shalt pay overtime and accept without question and without persecution employees who choose not to work overtime
- Thou shalt staff appropriately and remain full staffed to the best of your ability.
- Thou shalt pay better than your competitors to ensure all roles are filled.
- Thou shalt disclose the pay scale of all positions to ensure transparency, fairness, and prevent discrimination.
- Thou shalt grow the number of positions based on need, as required.
- Thou shalt not use “Other related duties” to force employees to do work that is obviously not within their job descriptions.
- Thou shalt accept sickness, emergency, and situations outside of employee control as valid reasons to miss work without question, guilt, or persecution. Thou shalt provide paid time off for these reasons
- Thou shalt promote from within wherever possible and will provide training and advancement opportunities for high performing staff in entry positions prior to seeking external candidates.
- Thou shalt have a no tolerance policy related to all forms of harassment, bullying, wage theft, sexism, ageism, nepotism, racism, and/or other discrimination. This policy will result in the immediate dismissal of any staff member who engages in this type of activity and must satisfactorily address all forms of workplace violence (physical, mental, or sexual) in an effective and immediate manner to prevent reoccurrence. Failure to investigate immediately is considered discriminatory against the employee reporting the issue for the purposes of this policy.
- Though shalt have a non-punitive reporting policy.
At the end of the day, if companies can't abide by the employer commandments then their business model sucks.