Business Etiquette

If you worry that the personal habits and behavior of your employees—particularly new hires, fresh out of school—might be holding them back (and re­­flect­­ing poorly on your organization), try these tips for reinforcing business etiquette.

It still pays to play nice at work, a Robert Half survey confirms. When employees were asked, “In your opinion, to what extent does being courteous to co-workers positively impact a person’s career prospects?” 48% responded it can accelerate advancement.

In some offices, you might kick-start relationships between older and younger workers with these tips:  Try reverse-mentoring ... Go out of your way to collaborate with different generations ... Don’t get hung up on office eti­­quette you think everyone should be following.

Thanks to our increasingly online (and visible) lives, it’s more im­­por­­tant than ever to know how to apologize well. When you wrong some­­­­­one—a colleague or a customer—apologize by doing three things:

If you're effective and execute work flawlessly with integrity and style, you might want to contact someone like Melba Duncan. Duncan, founder of the Duncan Group, specializes in finding top-notch assistants for top-level executives. Another reason you may need Duncan's help: "This is one of the most difficult jobs to put on paper," she says.

If you’ve ever been hung up on or interrupted, you’ve been the victim of a loss of civility in the workplace. Bring back courtesy and build a kinder workplace with tips from Tom Terez of WorkplaceNow.com:

Maria had been emailing back and forth with a colleague all day about a work issue, when she finally decided to cc the boss. It felt like the right thing to do. But that’s not how it turned out. In­­stead, it came back to bite her. How to avoid cc’ing up and other email faux pas:

Perfume? Too personal. Coffee maker? Too expensive (unless it’s a group gift). The rules for gift-giving at work, in those offices that swap presents, are fairly straightforward. Here’s advice from experts:

When a group of co-workers chip in to buy a gift for a colleague, should they allow noncontributors to sign the card, as well? Or should they leave the gift shirkers out in the cold? An office coordinator in Florida posed this etiquette question to us recently.

A passenger who checked in for an Air Canada flight was handed a first-class boarding pass even though he was an infrequent flier on a cheap ticket. Why? “Our station manager noticed how well-dressed you are and told me to up­­grade you,” the gate agent told him.