Why Boundary Setting Should be a Front and Center Topic for Every Business in the Service Industry
In the late 1800’s Marshall Field, Founder of Marshall Field and Company, coined the term “the customer is always right”. This term was created to motivate employees at his department store to provide good customer service. While he was a pioneer for his time for transforming the customer experience, this blind mindset has shaped our culture.
So much has changed between then and now. At some point, the humans who have been hired to deliver this experience, have been forgotten. This belief system is based in social inequality and marginalization of minority groups.
Within the landscape of providing excellent customer experience, it’s become acceptable to compromise the emotional health of employees. Because, the customer is always right.
When I first started hiring employees at The Tidy People, I became a boss at a very young age — 23. At the time, I had no idea what I was signing up for in hiring and managing employees. In time, I would come to learn more about the business of people and how to build and maintain business relationships.
As I began to hear the stories of different people in the service industry, it became clear to me that “the customer is always right” ideology has become a mechanism in workplace culture driven by fear and shame.
In one interview, when I asked a potential hire why they left their last job, they shared:
“I used to work at a coffee shop, where the bosses husband would frequently drop in, who wasn’t a manager. He would micromanage our work. I would receive passive aggressive comments from time to time, that were belittling and dehumanizing. One day I witnessed a coworker drop a tray of food. The husband yelled at my coworker in front of other employees and patrons: “what is wrong with you?!”
She quit shortly thereafter.
Another person who I interviewed with, shared this story:
“In a serving job, after I received repeated abusive comments from a customer, I brought this forward to my manager. Instead of setting the boundary with the customer, the manager told me to deal with it or they’d hire someone else in place of them to deal with it. While I stayed at this job after this, I attributed this period of time in my life as one of my hardest.”
Mid-covid shutdown in 2020, I had two different friends who had similar experiences:
“An ambush zoom call by their manager to criticize performance, told to be silent during the entire meeting, without a chance to respond. The meeting didn’t include one piece of constructive feedback for their job moving forward. Only a tongue wagging. Both friends quit their jobs days later.”
Marshall Fields department store image source
What I’ve intuitively learned through experience, is the complete opposite of what the guidelines are in our culture when it comes to leadership.
When I first had the vision of building a team and I started to prepare to hire my first employees, I was met with this statement by many elders: “Don’t. Employees are problems”.
Yes. Employees can be a “problem”. However, to better sum it up, humans are complex. This is what it means to have any relationship, no matter the nature.
I’d like to emphasize the importance of creating a value system in the workplace that includes both accountability and autonomy. Here’s my top tips for creating a workplace that’s emotionally healthy, thriving, and ultimately puts humans first:
Create a Ceiling for Boundaries
I used to think that in order to set boundaries, you must be angry to do so. It’s actually quite the opposite when you’re coming from a place of being human centered. First and foremost, in order to set boundaries, you need to know the framework for what those boundaries are.
Every time there’s a new questionable situation, it goes in the handbook. Even though I make the final decision as CEO, I rely heavily on employee feedback. Equality is important. I don’t tell employees to do something because a manager or I said so. There’s always a legitimate reason as to why we do things the way we do. If a policy doesn’t make sense, or it’s outdated — we change it.
This should be a baseline for ALL places of business:
• Racism of any form is not ok.
• Sexism of any form is not ok.
• Workplace bullying of any form is not ok.
• Mental health days are sick days.
• Equity and inclusivity is to be actively practiced.
• When an employee expresses concern, brings forward a complaint, needs to set a realistic boundary for physical or emotional health: believe them.
Mistreatment is Often Irreparable
The moment that you willingly or passively create a negative experience for an employee in which they receive or perceive mistreatment, you’ve not only lost their respect, you’ve also lost their engagement and commitment to work. At the center of this, this destroys company culture and you’ve got someone who is either actively looking for other work, or, has simply resigned in their efforts to stay fully engaged at their job.
Our brains are wired to remember the ONE negative experience or occurrence that happened to us. We’re made this way in order to protect ourselves and not repeat cycles that can do harm to us.
The only way to navigate through a received or perceived negative experience for an employee is to be open to feedback, understand their perspective, and do better. Which brings me to my next point…
Communication is THE Core Company Value
While we have a handful of core company values, we always fall back on communication as our #1 value.
No matter what industry you’re in, doing business requires relationships. And relationships can have a lot of gray areas at times when it comes to healthy boundaries. Which is why I’m always listening and encouraging a high level of communication amongst my team.
Have a framework and expectation, but also know that boundaries and reasons for them might vary from individual to individual. Within reason, this should be completely acceptable within the workplace.
At times, I’ll have employees come to me with an ask that I cannot accommodate. This might be because of the nature of how we do business or due to the snapshot of where my business is at, at that moment. When this happens, the employee usually understands this because I’ve created a level of transparency through our communication with each other. Through transparency, I build trust and ultimately — loyalty. Loyal employees are dedicated to the work they do and show up for everybody.
And when they can’t and my business model or operations don’t work for an employee, they leave. And this is ok too. I don’t want people working for me who are miserable and resentful of the work they do.
Good Leadership Actively Practices Emotional Intelligence
Instilling fear does not work. A statement such as “if you won’t do the job, I have plenty of other people who will” is toxic and abusive. In doing so, a leader is instilling fear into the workplace culture. Fear isn’t motivating and at best, it only creates short term solutions. And in the long term it creates a workplace centered around workplace bullying tactics.
Leadership needs to come from a place of emotional intelligence. Being open to conversations and listening to feedback is what’s most valuable and insightful. Open conversations that feel safe for employees, lead to innovative ideas. Understanding different perspectives and experiences can bring breakthroughs in the workplace and in business. The more that employee voices are heard, the more impactful it is. It gives people a platform for progressive change AND is human first.
And that is when we can truly put the customer first: when humans are put first.
