Guide to Business Etiquette and Workplace Manners

Ever feel uncomfortable about your social skills? Do you, for example, dread going to an interview dinner? Do you sometimes suspect that you make your co-workers feel uncomfortable? What’s proper etiquette in today’s workplace environment? Careers and business deals can hinge on proper etiquette and on the projection of a professional image.

“Experts say that most people decide to establish an ongoing relationship or not in the first four minutes they spend with someone,” reports Dr. Kerry Strayer, organizational behaviour specialist. Being polite and knowing proper etiquette can help you make positive first impressions as well as lasting relationships.

In this “Guide to Business Etiquette and Workplace Manners,” Dr. Guffey covers 17 topics of interest to both workplace newcomers and veterans. To gauge your current level of knowledge of business etiquette, take Dr. Guffey’s Preview Quiz. To sharpen your business etiquette skills generally, study what Dr. Guffey has to say on all 17 business etiquette topics.

Topics

Professional Image

DO:

• Realize that your attire affects the impression you make.
  
• Find out what your company allows. Ask whether a dress-down policy is in effect. Observe what others are wearing on casual dress days.
  
• Dress conservatively for job interviews or when meeting customers.
  
• Cover tattoos and remove nose rings, excessive earrings, and rings in other orifices during the business day.

DO NOT:

• Assume that business casual means Saturday attire. Do not wear sweat suits, spandex, shorts, T-shirts with slogans, bared-midriff outfits, halter tops, tank tops, or flip flops.
  
• Wear clothing that is overly provocative.
  
• Wear excessive jewellery or fragrance in the workplace.

Introductions and Greetings

DO:

• Stand up, smile, extend your hand, and make eye contact when being introduced.
  
• Introduce a higher-ranking individual to a lower-ranking person. “Mr. Topman, I’d like you to meet Ellen Ayers, our new administrative assistant.”
  
• Use full names in introductions. Don’t be “Joe in Advertising.” Full names enhance credibility and professional identity.
  
• Respond with a greeting such as “I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Topman” or “How do you do, Ellen.” Repeating the person’s name is a good memory device.
  
• Shake hands with a firm but not overpowering grip.

DO NOT:

• Wait for the other person to extend his or her hand. It is no longer necessary for a man to wait for a woman to extend her hand. Men and women are workplace equals.
  
• Sustain a handshake longer than about three seconds, even if the introduction drags on.
  
• Expect hugs and kisses (other than among entertainment industry businesspeople).
  
• Panic if you forget a name. Be calm and say, “I remember meeting you, but I simply can’t recall your name.”

Networking Manners

DO:

• Prepare before attending a business gathering. Learn who will be there, plan your objectives, and research topics that might be discussed.
  
• Plan to spend about five to seven minutes with each person and then move on.
  
• Expect to learn something from everyone you meet.
  
• Introduce yourself with a practiced one-line description of your business.
  
• Wear your nametag on your right shoulder, which is the natural place for people to look when they shake your hand.

DO NOT:

• Make a sales pitch at a networking function. You’ll be considered pushy, desperate, or inexperienced.
  
• Monopolize one person; your goal is to meet many individuals.
  
• Do all the talking. The information you gather by listening at networking functions is invaluable in forming working relationships.
  
• Pass out business cards as if you were handing out flyers. Wait until the end of a conversation and deliver each card personally.

General Workplace Manners

DO:

• Smile and greet co-workers in passing.
  
• Share recognition for collaborative projects.
  
• Respect the personal space of individuals. Standing about 40 centimetres away is a reasonable distance for conversation.
  
• Observe company practices in relation to courtesy titles. Polite individuals address older people and those with higher rank by “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Ms.”; but this practice depends on a company’s culture.
  
• Contribute your fair share for office treats, gifts, or housekeeping duties.
  
• Remember that “please” and “thank you” are always appropriate.
  
• Strive to make doctor and dental appointments for the beginning or end of the day. Ask whether you can make up the time by working late or during the lunch hour.

DO NOT:

• Address people as “Hon,” “Dear,” “Son,” “Doll,” or “Babe” in the workplace or on the telephone.
  
• Be overly familiar with peers or superiors. Avoid back-slapping, nudging, hugging, elbowing, or other touching that implies intimacy
  
• Put your briefcase or papers on someone else’s desk or table.
  
• Act like a storm trooper in reacting to smoking or smoke-permeated clothing. If you want someone to put out a cigarette, ask politely.
  
• Assume that a shared project means that you can frequently break the concentration of a colleague who is hard at work.
  
• Enter the closed office of a co-worker or superior. Decide whether your business is important enough to interrupt the individual by knocking on the door.
  
• Discuss problematic topics. Avoid religion, politics, health, dieting, personal problems, and the cost of anything not work-related.
  
• Assume that you can take home small supplies from your workplace. No matter how entitled you feel, it is thievery.

Coping With Cubicles

DO:

• Keep a neat cube. Unless restricted by company policy, install pictures of your family, pets, and hobbies to make your cube homey.
  
• Use a conference room or pay phone to place sensitive calls.
  
• Dress conservatively for job interviews or when meeting customers.
  
• Let your neighbours know in a polite, non-threatening way if they are consistently noisy.
  
• Enter another cubicle only after asking permission.
  
• Use body language to let doorway hangers-on know that it’s time to get back to work.
  
• Walk over to or call on the telephone to someone in a nearby cubicle — rather than shouting over the walls.

DO NOT:

• Communicate by standing up like a Prairie dog or by hanging over cubicle walls.
  
• Yell requests or responses over the tops of cubicle walls.
  
• Eat smelly food in your cube, and avoid wearing strong fragrances.
  
• Say anything you don’t want everyone to hear.
  
• Pin on your cubicle walls anti-company articles from magazines or newspapers.
  
• Chime in on conversations overheard from adjacent cubicles.

Interacting With Superiors

DO:

• Understand that your boss is in charge.
  
• Be deferent without grovelling. Respect the boss’s opinions and decisions.
  
• Realize that you must do your job and do it on time if you want to get along with your boss.
  
• Support the decisions of your boss, and occasionally pay compliments.
  
• Contribute ideas and look for solutions to problems.

DO NOT:

• Waste the boss’s time. Offer ideas and explanations concisely. Submit support documents when needed.
  
• Expect to be good buddies with the boss.
  
• Undermine your supervisor’s position. In a conflict between a boss and a worker, the boss always wins.
  
• Lie for your boss. Avoid saying anything untruthful to cover up for a superior’s mistakes or flaws.

Manager’s Manners

DO:

• Expect to earn the respect of clients and workers. Be polite to everyone.
  
• Keep an open door. Be available to receive ideas, general comments, and complaints from employees.
  
• Listen carefully. Don’t try to complete other tasks while talking with an employee. Be open to others’ views and suggestions.
  
• Give compliments freely; they cost you nothing.
  
• Provide thorough instructions when assigning projects.
  
• Encourage feedback. Use a “how-could-we-do-it-better” approach in coaching employees.

DO NOT:

• Use fear or threats to manipulate employees. Changed behaviour is more effectively achieved through constructive, positive criticism than through threats of demotion or firing.
  
• Expect employees to be your good buddies. Socialize at company events, but generally do not socialize after hours just for fun. Employees should not feel obligated to party with the boss. Relationships with employees work best if they are professional only.
  
• Deliver bad news publicly. Find a setting that offers confidentiality. Try to deliver bad news face-to-face rather than in writing or by telephoning.
  
• Divulge confidential information given to you by employees.

Business Meetings

DO:

• Distribute an agenda at least two days in advance. As a participant, read the agenda and be prepared.
  
• Arrive on time. It is rude and disrespectful to others to be late.
  
• Introduce yourself, if necessary, when you arrive. Greet others.
  
• Wait to be seated until told where to sit (especially if you are new to the group).
  
• Contribute ideas and help the leader keep the meeting on target.
  
• Clean up after yourself. Dispose of any papers or trash you have generated.

DO NOT:

• Allow your cell phone to ring in the middle of a meeting. Never talk on a phone during a meeting.
  
• Slouch or lean on the table with our elbows. Look alert by maintaining proper posture.
  
• Perform personal grooming tasks such as applying lipstick, combing your hair, or clipping your fingernails.
  
• Read memos or e-mail while others are speaking. Do not play with paperclips, bite pencils, or doodle.
  
• Interrupt others who are speaking. Signal the meeting leader that you wish to speak and wait your turn.
  
• Leave early without a good reason. Tell others that you will be leaving at a specific time and apologize.

Business Gifts

DO:

• Give gifts for work-related anniversaries, birthdays, personal milestones such as a marriage or a new baby, or a thank-you for help with a difficult project or client.
  
• Check to ensure that recipient’s company allows gifts. If individual gifts are prohibited, you might show appreciation by sending a gourmet food basket or subscribing to a trade magazine for the entire office.
  
• Include personal notes with all gifts. If this is impossible, send a special letter explaining that the gift is coming.
  
• Deliver gifts in person when possible.
  
• Send a thank-you immediately. Every gift deserves a response even if you didn’t like the gift. Handwrite the thank-you; don’t call or send an e-mail.

DO NOT:

• Send generic, inappropriate, tasteless, or offensive gifts. Learn about the recipients’ religious or cultural preferences and the recipients’ lifestyle.
  
• Offer a business gift as a bribe!
  
• Generally give gifts to your boss, especially if the gifts are expensive or personal.
  
• Give gifts of different value to people in the same office; recipients of the less valuable gifts might feel slighted.
  
• Send a gift of flowers or food without making sure the recipient will be available to receive it.
  
• Recycle business gifts.
  
• Give someone a gift that is more expensive than a gift you might expect to receive from him or her.

Business Cards

DO:

• Have high-quality cards printed with a readable font. If you are job hunting, prepare a card with your personal contact information. If you represent a company, include your company identification and all your addresses and phone numbers.
  
• Keep a supply of clean, fresh cards in your jacket pocket or in a special holder.
  
• Ask for a card and give yours if you are reasonably sure you’ll be dealing with an individual again.
  
• Treat business cards as gifts. When you receive a card, take a moment to study it and then perhaps remark on its distinctive design.
  
• Show respect by visibly placing the card in your wallet, purse, datebook, or briefcase carefully.
  
• At a social event offer your card privately to someone, but delay business talk until another day.

DO NOT:

• Stuff a proffered card into your pocket like a scrap of paper.
  
• Write on a card in front of the giver. This is like defacing a gift. Make notes about the function and about information requests once you have left an event.

Dealing With Angry Customers

DO:

• Let angry customers make their complaints without interrupting. Try to detach yourself and focus on the core problem.
  
• Defer judgment. Listen for the customer’s feelings, but also objectively assess the situation.
  
• Be courteous and polite. Don’t take the angry customer’s venting personally. Remember that you have coworkers and superiors to turn to for support if needed.
  
• Pause for a few seconds after a customer finishes to be sure the customer’s thought is complete. Introduce yourself and say that you want to help solve the customer’s problem.
  
• Make affirming statements and invite additional comments.
  
• If a customer does not calm down, take his or her telephone number and promise to call back in a couple of hours or at a specified time on the next day.
  
• Decide how to resolve the problem. Explain to the customer the steps you will take, not actions you can’t take.

DO NOT:

• Be sidetracked by irrelevant issues, such as trying to refute exaggerations or errors.
  
• Mentally criticize the customer’s grammar, tone of voice, speaking style, or appearance.
  
• Blame the customer or act superior if the problem turns out to be the customer’s fault.
  
• Promise more than you can deliver.

Telephone Manners

DO:

• Plan a mini-agenda so that you can remember to cover all the points you want to make.
  
• Use a three-point introduction: “May I speak to Jason Johns? This is Lisa Lane of IBM, and I want to talk with him about software.”
  
• Be cheerful and accurate.
  
• Speak slowly and distinctly even if you are rushed.
  
• Conclude a call with statements such as “I appreciate talking with you, and I’ll get back to you with those figures by Friday.”
  
• Let your phonemate know if you are using a speaker phone and others are in the room.

DO NOT:

• Eat while making a telephone call.
  
• Complete other tasks while talking. Listeners can hear keyboard clicking and paper shuffling.
  
• Interrupt a conversation to answer a second incoming call. If absolutely necessary, excuse yourself, put the caller on hold, and quickly explain to the other caller that you will have to call back.
  
• Leave a radio or music playing in the background. Avoid running noisy office equipment during a call.
  
• Sneeze, blow your nose, or cough directly into the receiver. Excuse yourself for a moment.
  
• Overuse the name of your phonemate during a conversation. Doing so sounds insincere and patronizing.
  
• Pick up a ringing phone and, using caller ID, immediately identify the caller (“Hi, Ron!”). Such responses startle callers and might make you appear sneaky.

Cell Phone Etiquette

DO: