Entrepreneurs, look at the buzz about Justin Timberlake’s voting booth selfie as a teachable moment for your employees. If the employees at your office are discussing it, take a moment to talk about company rules and regulations.
Social media and the internet are full of stories and photos of Justin Timberlake’s voting booth selfie. If you are an employer, your employees may be discussing this around the office today. If they are, don’t shut down the conversations. Instead use them as an opportunity to discuss corporate policy. There are four lessons entrepreneurs can take from this current news event.
- Make sure employees clearly understand corporate expectations.
- Keep company rules in writing and easily accessible.
- Where possible, involve employees in rule and policy changes.
- Have fair and reasonable consequences for employees who violate corporate policies.
Make sure employees clearly understand corporate expectations.
It is unreasonable to expect employees to follow policies and procedures you have not told them about. When you hire employees and throughout their employment, make sure they know the rules and regulations at your company.
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Keep company rules in writing and easily accessible.
Memories are fleeting. Even when you talk to employees about corporate rules and regulations on a regular basis, put them in writing. When rules and regulations are in writing, they are less likely to be forgotten and their existence cannot be disputed.
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Where possible, involve employees in rule and policy changes.
From time to time the rules and regulations at your company will need to change. When these occasions arise, try to involve employees in the change process. This will make them feel better about the changes and make it more likely that they will follow the new rules and procedures.
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Have fair and reasonable consequences for employees who violate corporate policies.
It is important to understand that no matter how reasonable the policies and procedures at your company, from time to time there ll be violations. For this reason, you must have a system in place to fairly and efficiently deal with violations.
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Entrepreneurs, always be mindful of the fact that there are lessons to be learned in every circumstance. All you have to do is look for them.
I actually missed the whole JT voting booth thing, but these are great reminders for employees and employers.
Wow I didn’t know about that, I’ve got to check it out! But this totally needs to be discussed!
oh wow. this is something else. go JT. It is actually a pretty cool reminder.
JT voting booth? Very interesting! Great reminders for entrepreneurs! Loved your post!
Such an important thing that needs to be addressed. It seems like younger employees, with social media all around, have a lot more potential ways to get themselves in trouble if they don’t know & follow company rules than back in the pre-social media era.
JT voting booth? so cool! Great reminders for entrepreneurs!
I think this article should be required reading for every manager/boss -when there is transparency on the part of the boss and a real incorporation of the employee in procedure– it will go a long way in gaining that employee’s trust and his/her allegiance to the company!
These are really great lessons for entrepreneurs to learn. We definitely need to let our teams know what they expectations are.
These are all great! I don’t really know a lot about entrepreneur. This is a great reminder!
Great reminders! I think it is important to have your employees know the company rules when they start.
Having the rules in writing and accessible to employees is important. I’ve seen people arguing over rules before and they didn’t have access to them in writing. It all came down to heresay.
Being an entrepreneur has been a lot of lessons and hard work for me this year. Love your insight on things like this… very inspiring! I need to check out JT’s voting booth selfie. I love him!
I didn’t see the voting booth selfie, so I first need to google that. Then I’ll have some context for the post. It would make a great intro to the conversation.
Actually, this is something that really needs to be addressed. I’ve had jobs where the expectations were so buried in the rules and regs that it was impossible to observe them all, just for the sake that they were too hard to find. Keeping expectations clear and simple seems to be the proper approach to insuring compliance.
It was definitely good going annoying what expectations are. As an entrepreneur sometimes you forget that’s because you really don’t think of yourself as the boss, but you do need to act like one when you have employees.
This is an excellent reminder. All too often, people have the best intentions. As leaders we have to let our teams know what the expectations are and how to gather information once they have questions.