I feel exploited by my employees — Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I lead a manufacturing business that I co-founded over a decade ago. It turned its first profit recently, but all this time, we as the owners have taken care of everyone by taking colossal personal debt and making incredible sacrifices, including working ourselves an average of 60 hours a week.

We have always managed to pay our staff on time and to increase wages and benefits gradually even when the business was faring pretty badly, insulating them from our woes. We try to personally support employees and to make sure they feel secure, keep growing and that the culture stays safe, healthy, and dynamic.

We also make a deliberate effort to observe the unwritten rules of “bosshood.” We stayed silent when a disgruntled ex-employee was badmouthing us around town. We ignore the occasional unfair online review, take on the feedback, and hope that the other reviews will balance out the story. We settle final pay cheerfully and promptly for employees who have delivered no value we can detect. We bend over backwards to place star employees we cannot keep. In short, the company aims to keep the moral high ground, no matter what.

But frankly, I feel exhausted and exploited. I don’t expect kudos. But how about mere professionalism and reciprocal human decency?

It seems to me that the culture fails to acknowledge employees can be bullies who victimize employers. Who decided that the employee is always right? Don’t both sides have responsibility to be fair, sane, and cordial? Where does my responsibility as a “good” employer start and end? Please help me make sense of this.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.