Apples for Health- Employees treated with dignity = profits

Employees treated with dignity = profits

RALEIGH, N.C., March 26 (UPI) -- Managers can get much better performance when they treat team members with honesty, kindness, dignity and respect, U.S. researchers found.

Study co-authors Jon Bohlmann of the North Carolina State University, Tianjiao Qiu of California State University, Long Beach, and William Qualls and Deborah E. Rupp of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focused on cross-functional product development teams, which bring together engineers, researchers and business personnel.

The diverse backgrounds of the team members means there is a focus on finance and marketing, as well as design and functionality but that diversity also makes effective communication essential, in order to ensure that team members are collaborating rather than working at cross-purposes.

The study evaluated whether team members felt they were being well treated by their project leader. This evaluation included questions as to whether team members felt their leader was honest, kind and considered the viewpoints of team members.

Bohlmann found that if people think they are being treated well, they are going to work well with others on their team and the finding shows that being nice and playing well with others gives people and their organizations a very real competitive advantage.

The finding was published in the March issue of the Journal of Product Innovation Management.