50 Intriguing Employee Quotes Celebrating Workers

If you are searching for employee quotes, look no further.  

We have some inspiring employee sayings for your reading enjoyment. 

What is an employee?

An employee is someone who works for wages or a salary. 

When was the last time you commended an employee on their hard work? 

Most employees quit their jobs because their superiors do not acknowledge their work. 

Check out these eye-opening facts about employees below:

• Retaining employees is more complicated than hiring them. 
• Recent Gallup polls find only 36% of employees feel engaged at work. 
•  Organizations with high employee engagement are more resilient

Maybe you are a hard-working employee. 

Do you find your work engaging? 

Finding work that is meaningful to us is an essential step toward happiness. 

Many would argue that a business is only as successful as its employees. 

In any industry, competent and knowledgeable employees are necessary.

Human beings are sensitive. 

Getting chewed out by a customer or absorbing feedback from leadership can be challenging for some people. 

Richard Branson notes, “When you’re at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee.” 

Employees make the world go round, and many businesses would fail without them.

They carry out the mission of a business and interact with the public.  

As the lifeblood of a company, employees handle every aspect of the operation. 

Value and trust are reciprocal 

If a business does not value its employees, the employees will not value the business. 

These quotes about employees are a compilation of humorous, insightful, motivational, and thought-provoking.

Check out our employee quotes below. 

If you enjoy this article, check out our collection of employee appreciation quotes to motivate your team.

Employee quotes about the company

Without employees, we would have no companies. 

1. “I’m not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.” — Karl Lagerfeld

2. “I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.” — Naguib Mahfouz

3. “This is the only country in the world where today’s employee is tomorrow’s employer.” — Marco Rubio 

4. “If you’re an employer, you want to hire an employee who’ll do their job, not do your bidding.” — Jeffrey Jones

5. “We believe strongly in employee share ownership.” — Jim Ratcliffe

6. “In the movies, the writer is just the servant, the employee.” — Salman Rushdie

7. “Being an employee is never a good outcome. That’s just an opinion.” — Kevin O’Leary 

8. “I want to say here and now that I demand unshakable integrity of every State employee.” — Charles Edison 

9. “There’s no better example of how to lead a difficult employee than to have a child.” — Alissa Quart 

10. “Being an employee is a bad outcome. You want to avoid that.” — Kevin O’Leary

Employee appreciation quotes

Everyone loves to be appreciated, particularly hard-working employees. 

11. “When an employee asks why the company does things a certain way, and you can explain the logical reason, then the employee knows what she’s doing is valid.” — Harvey Mackay

12. “Especially when you’re at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee.” — Richard Branson

13. “There was a time when the contractual relationship between the employer and the employee was supposed to be none of the public’s business. That time has passed.” — Frank Murphy

14. “You can not only do great things for an urban core by moving your employee base there, but you’re also going to be a better business.” — Dan Gilbert

15. “And I particularly like the whole thing of being boss. Boss and employee.” — Hugh Grant

16. “I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer.” — Tom DeLay

17. “I prefer to praise employees for what they’re doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it’s the way I choose to bet.” — Richard Branson

18. “My job is the Constitution of the United States; I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.” — Tom DeLay

19. “It was a simple question any employee should ask: ‘Oh, and by the way, how do I get my health insurance to be seamless?’” — Andrew P. Harris

20. “The orbs create feedback loops that can influence either personal or employee behavior.” — David Rose

If you enjoy this article, check out our collection of workplace quotes for employees.

Hard-working employee quotes

A hard-working employee is an asset to an organization.

21. “I don’t believe that employers should have access to an employee’s private passwords, including Facebook.” — Larry Bucshon

22. “People change jobs much more often, and therefore, companies, on average, invest less in employee development.” — Andrew Ng

23. “The time has come, to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.” — Newt Gingrich

24. “We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.” — Steve Ballmer

25. “Forget the empty platitudes; your star employee is not a ‘godsend.’ They are a person deserving of your not infrequent acknowledgment and worthy of appreciation and respect.” — Mark Goulston 

26. “I realized I wasn’t a good employee because I was too busy listening to people’s personal problems to do work.” — Mel Robbins

27. “I never thought of myself as an employee. But my first jobs as an adult were as an employee: at IBM, and then at my first start—up.” — Aaron Patzer

28. “As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract and had to count on my fingers.” — Lloyd Alexander

29. “It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees, and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.” — E. F. Schumacher

30. “Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high—quality decisions.” — Ben Horowitz

Employee quotes for the workplace

The workplace is where colleagues interact. 

31. “One thing an exceptional employee never says is, ‘That’s not in my job description.’ Exceptional employees work outside the boundaries of job descriptions.” — Travis Bradberry

32. “San Francisco businesses face many challenges, including high rents, regulatory burdens, and the rising cost of workers’ compensation insurance and employee health plans.” — Gavin Newsom

33. “The opponents of my budget propose taking $200 million out of our classrooms and instead spending it on a larger school employee pay raise.” — Bob Riley

34. “Understanding your employee’s perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness.” — Kathryn Minshew

35. “As you get older, I think everyone feels that, no matter what the job: to try a hand at running the business as opposed to simply being an employee.” — Campbell Scott

36. “An employee’s motivation is a direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager.” — Bob Nelson

37. “Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty.” — Harvey Mackay

38. “The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.” — Bruce Barton

39. “Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.” — Harvey Mackay

40. “Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.” — Demetri Martin

Funny employee quotes

It is healthy for us to be able to laugh at ourselves. 

41. “Everybody notices if you’re the last one in the morning and the first one to go in the evening. Always remember that as an employee.” — Tilman J. Fertitta

42. “These are the bosses who celebrate an employee’s success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts.” — Travis Bradberry

43. “If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don’t want to buy that, that’s fine. If they regret, they can sell us.” — Jack Ma

45. “A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.” — Zig Ziglar

46. “By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well.” — Richard Branson

47. “I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste.” — Johnny Depp

48. “Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long—term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable.” — Barbara Ehrenreich

49. “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” — Laurence J. Peter

50. “Every employee needs to know that there’s somebody out there that they serve. And when we don’t let people know that for one reason or another, we’re depriving them of a fulfilling job.” — Patrick Lencioni 

Employees deserve our respect 

It is more beneficial to keep an employee. 

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, the average cost per hire in 2016 was $4,129. 

A range of data demonstrates that retraining, recruiting, and rehiring are expensive. 

It is not cost-effective to continually have to get new employees. 

Treating employees with care is a smart business move. 

Rehiring and retraining cost the company revenue and time. 

Even worse, every new employee will have a lower productivity period until they learn the ropes. 

Treating employees as expendable assets is not a beneficial means of operation.

In many jobs, employees are overlooked and neglected. 

However, it does not pay for many companies to take the risk. 

Andrew Ng shared, “People change jobs much more often; therefore, companies, on average, invest less in employee development.” 

Finding the balance in the middle has been a challenge for both employers and employees. 

Let us know which employee quotes and sayings were your favorites in the comments.

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