Why you should be friends with your staff

By Darryl Stewart, Head of the Herd

If you feel right about becoming friends with your team then do it. Don’t give in to those that believe you should keep a professional distance. People respond to us best when we are our authentic selves. Listening to advice to keep your distance when your heart tells you otherwise makes you less authentic.

When it comes right down to it and the worst fear of the “keep your distance crowd” comes true and someone needs to lose their job, who would you rather hear it from? Some antiseptic manager you barely know or someone you know has your best interest at heart and knows who you are? Someone who gave you feedback all along that your performance was slipping, someone who tried hard to help you “make it”? Someone who let you go in a caring way and will stay your friend afterwards?

A job is just a job, but friends are hard to come by, and I will take them any way I can get them. Friends tell each other the truth. Great friendships survive incredible adversity. Working with friends makes work seem much less like work and far more like fun with a purpose. If the worst that can happen is that I may one day have to tell a friend that their current job is over (but not our friendship) and the best that can happen is that every day of our work life together seems far more like fun than work, the choice is easy for me.

IBEX Payroll extends our profound respect and immeasurable gratitude to all the ancestors and keepers of the land on whose traditional territories our work takes place. We acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional gathering place of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene people and the traditional homeland of the Métis people. This land is sacred, historical, and significant.

Every time we acknowledge this truth, we have an invitation and an opportunity to reflect on the wrongs of the past, what we do in the present, and what we can do to continually honour the people whose lands and water we benefit from today.

This statement only acts as a first step in honouring the land we reside on and its peoples, and must be paired with education, understanding and informed action.