Organizations Employee-Relationship Mistakes
Posted in Managing Employees
Let's turn the tables this time because let's be honest, mistakes are not only committed on the employee-end of the equation. Below are some of the mistakes employers make that alienate employees.
Add another level of hierarchy. Most employers think this is the way to go to get people to do what they want them to do.
Appraise and provide bonuses for individual performances. A lot of employers are guilty of this yet they complain that they cannot get their people to work as a group. Try praising and giving incentives to the entire group for a change.
Add additional people to re-audit and inspect your staffs' work.
Hiring people such as inspector to re-check your people's job just says you do not trust your staff's work or you just don't expect them to meet the standards.
Failure to create standards and give clear instructions or directions. This creates a problem in that the work doesn't get done which is a waste of time and company resources. Plus, it affects the entire organization's performance or the organization itself. Then managers wonder why work doesn't get done and blame their staff.
Create hierarchical steps and other road blocks. This tells people that, yes they can have their thoughts and ideas. BUT, these ideas are subject to veto. And what's the consequence? People don't make suggestions for improvement anymore.
Asking employee's opinions but not doing anything about it.
This just shows that no one up there is listening to lower level employees. Yet management wonders why there is no improvement in the group's performance.
Making a decision then asking the staff's opinion as if their response mattered.
Not dealing with rule breakers properly.
Employer catches a few trespassers. Instead of properly dealing with these rule breakers, management decides to chide people in a meeting, or worse make it a subject of chitchat by making people guess who the culprits are.
Make up new rules for everyone to follow as a means to address the failings of a few.
Provide recognition in expected patterns so that what started as a great idea quickly becomes entitlement. This is a bit like giving an incentive which went wrong somewhere. Next thing you know you're being asked to pay up for a trip or something.
Treat people as if they are untrustworthy by constantly keeping track of them, watching them and reprimanding them for small mistakes.
Fail to address behavior and actions of people that are inconsistent with stated and published organizational expectations and policies. (Better yet, let non-conformance go on until you are out of patience; then ambush the next offender with a disciplinary action!)
When managers complain they cannot get to all of their reviews because they have too many directly reporting staff members, hire more supervisors to do reviews. (Fail to recognize that an hour per quarter per person invested in development is the manager's most important job.)
Create policies for every contingency, thus allowing very little management latitude in addressing individual employee needs.
Conversely, have so few policies, that employees feel as if they reside in a free-for-all environment of favoritism and unfair treatment.
Make every task a priority. People will soon believe there are no priorities. More importantly, they will never feel as if they have accomplished a complete task or goal.
Schedule daily emergencies that prove to be false. This will ensure employees don't know what to do, or are, minimally, jaded about responding when you have a true customer emergency.
Ask employees to change the way they are doing something without providing a picture of what you are attempting to accomplish with the change. Label them "resisters" and send them to change management training when they don't immediately hop on the train.
Expect that people learn by doing everything perfectly the first time rather than recognizing that learning occurs most frequently in failure.
Letting a person fail when you had information, that he did not, which he might have used to make a different decision.
These various ingredients add up to a recipe for disaster if you want to be the employer of choice in the next decade.
(source:http://humanresources.about.com/od/interpersonalcommunication/a/twentymistakes_2.htm)
