Maintaining a professional work environment is an important part of any workplace. In this video, you’ll learn about the importance of your appearance, arriving on time, avoiding delays, and more.
The term professional dress means different things for different people. And it also means different things depending on the environment that you work in. Some work environments are relatively formal. They may want you to wear slacks or a tie.
And other work environments may be relatively casual. It may be casual Friday every day of the week. The goal is to find the right balance between what the organization expects and what you want to wear to work every day. The goal is to match what the organization would like everyone to wear and that makes everyone feel comfortable when they’re at work.
At your place of work, there may be designations or professional titles associated with individuals. And it’s important to recognize those titles and be able to use them properly during the workday. For example, it’s not unusual for someone who has spent years working towards a PhD to prefer being referred to as a doctor. It’s also important to treat people with the respect that they deserve and to make sure that you are abiding by whatever rules are set aside in your organization to maintain this level of professionalism.
Instead of being judgmental towards people’s knowledge of technology or how they’re using an application, your job should be more of a teacher. You have the ability to make people more aware and more comfortable with the technologies that they use every day. And that ultimately makes their job better and your job better.
We also don’t want to be judgmental because, eventually, we will be the one making a mistake. And we want to be sure that people treat us with the same professionalism that hopefully we provide to them.
There’s always a time for socializing in our off hours and on breaks, but usually when you’re at work is a time to be professional. We want to be on time to work and avoid any type of distractions. This includes personal calls, texting from your phone, and scrolling through social media sites.
Everybody in the organization has a series of tasks that they’re responsible for. And we have to make sure that we are focused on those tasks during the workday. There will certainly be a time when an urgent call comes through that you have to take in front of a customer. But if you ask the customer if it’s OK to take the call and then apologize afterwards for taking time away and distracting from your job, it’s an important part of maintaining professionalism.
As a technologist, I’d like to be approachable for the people that need my assistance so I tend to keep a bowl of candy at my desk so that people will stop by and be more encouraged to have a conversation. And if I do need to have a conversation with a customer, I want to be sure that I’m in an area with no background noise. And you should always refrain from being on a speakerphone when talking with a customer.
When technical problems occur, the situations can sometimes be very tense. Emotions can run high. And sometimes people may say things they don’t really mean. Your goal as a technologist is, of course, to resolve the problem, but you also have to work through these interpersonal relationships that we have when one of these issues occurs. We should never get into an argument where we’re being defensive about the things people are asking of us.
The goal is to be a partner in solving this problem and not to contradict each other during the process. It’s remarkable how much you can do when you simply sit back and listen to what people are telling you about a particular technical issue. Not only does this allow someone to vent about this very frustrating problem, it also creates a better relationship between you and your customers.
These problems may also take place over a number of days or number of weeks, so it’s always useful to check in from time to time and make sure that the customer knows that we are still working towards a resolution. And although many organizations already have rules about posting information on social media, you should always think about keeping your business work private and not putting any of that information on a public forum.
When you work in a company, you almost always are running across some type of sensitive information. And if you work in the IT department, you’re probably seeing more of this type of information than anybody else in the organization. We have access to data and information that simply is not used in other parts of the company. And often this information is private and contains sensitive data.
As a technologist, you’ve been trusted with this very personal and sensitive information so you should make sure that you’re able to maintain a level of professionalism, especially when it comes to keeping information private. Ultimately, you should treat people the same way that you would like to be treated yourself. This creates an environment where there is professionalism and trust among everyone in the organization.