Return to Author Return to Main PageThis article explores the various different poor management practices which impact staff morale. Over the years I have had clients discuss the various ways they had experienced psychological harm within the workplace due to poor management. I have found staff morale an interesting topic and something I thought I would take the time to write about today. So lets get the ball rolling and look of the propensity of bad management.
Good management has always consisted of good people skills, maintaining god fiscal responsibility, good communication skills, the ability to place the right staff into the right job as well as organisational and planing skills. When managing staff, people skills are at the forefront of the skills list. Without the ability to relate and converse with staff in a non offensive manner or treat employees fairly, staff will gradually become resentful towards the manager and / or the organisation. The basic of all human traits is the need to feel like we matter, we are needed and seen as an equal (regardless if this is not actually the case). Failure to promote these values will result in further depreciating staff moral like a viral contagion sweeping uncontrollably through the organisation which eventually results in greater staff loss or lower productivity.
Their is no excuse for poor management because the organisation as a whole will suffer if an incompetent manager is promoted into managerial positions. It is not uncommon to hear the phrases “the job is high stress” or even “it is typical of the industry” when organisations attempt to defuse responsibility for poor management practices as they grapple to reason their higher staff losses. Some workplaces have such a high turn over of staff, one could quite easily assume they were participating in a twisted version of the “survivor” reality TV show without the million dollar bounty. I guess it‘ s only normal for management at fault to diffuse blame for the high staffing loss numbers, because if they own the error such managers are not likely to be managers for long. However some organisations only look at bottom line figures, quotas and are not bothered with high staffing losses thus effectively becoming the equivalent of a meat grinder that takes good staff and grinding them to the stage of burning out to discard at a later date. These types of organisation are likely to inflict greater psychological harm to it’s staff members and could easily find themselves in messy workers compensation claims or known to have a poor reputation.
I have previously seen psychological injuries which evolved into workers compensation claims due to poor management. If I were to offer but one advice regarding this articles topic, it would be if you recognise your workplace has exceedingly poor management and exceptionally high staff turn over secure employment elsewhere if and when possible. While many of the cases had had seen won the legal fights, the psychological carnage it had upon the employee is just not worth it. With the advent of the Internet, sometimes it is possible to research organisations prior to starting employment, while other times simple networking tactics such as speaking to employees as they exit a workplace may also reveal the general tone if staff feel dejected. In response to a client who was concerned about entering a stressful coffee shop job, I had made the suggestion to sit in the coffee shop as a customer and have a coffee. Don t say anything, just listen, watch and observe. Often our own observations will yield far superior feedback to the workplace and by doing so in this case the client would be able to clearly see how the staff interact with each other. Another suggestion I had put forward to the client was to go online and see if organisation reviews were present which may reveal some information regarding the organisation. This advice was given through personal experience where I had searched online for a business I have been employed by only to find the large amount of negative reviews. To no surprise the fed back oth client and staff who no longer worked at the organisation often reflected the organisations failings which I had personally observed myself.
The old saying Baptism of fire
relates to throwing one straight into the job with very little training. Another relevant saying is sink or swim
, however these terms tend to neutralised the need for effective employment training. These sayings also minimise the severity of stressors placed upon the staff member while they work to become proficient in their role.
Poor training has the capacity to add to the employee confusion and inhibiting the capacity to complete the task and the ability to learn the role faster. Poor training will increase the rate and amount of mistakes needing to be corrected which the employee may negatively internalise. Staff who are not appropriately trained for their tasks are more likely to feel a sense of nervousness, anxiety, experience increased stress as they may fear “getting into trouble”, looking like an idiot or fear loosing their job because they are making errors. This ongoing state of heighten anxiety and stress could become the first brick of negativity being laid which causes the employee to alter their perception of the organisation and it’s lack of social support structure. If your a manager who glamorises the words “Baptism of fire”, “sink or swim” then here are two another words for you “Burn out!” and “Workers Compensation”.
Having the right tools for the job is of up most importance for work flow efficiency because if one does not have the correct tools, the employees ability to finish the tasks effectively and efficiently is seriously degraded. A good example is having a large organisation with significantly slow and outdated I.T infrastructure. Slow and outdated hardware will do nothing but increase the staff stress as they are pushed to the limits of frustration to complete their tasks in time. This frustration is further exacerbated if KPI’s or other deadlines are used. Any staff member who is pushed to the limits of frustration frequently enough is likely to experience a growing sense of resentment towards the organisation, experience a sense of helplessness which in turn causes the employee to enters a learned helplessness state because the employee routinely does not achieve their set goals regardless of their efforts. The net result is lowered morale as the employee resents the tools they had been provided with and staff will develop a poor opinion of the workplace and management. If tasks are not routinely achieved, the employee may be left in a quandary whether to stay behind or to leave the work place. This is not an ideal situation because the workplace is indirectly interfering with the employees life out of the workplace all because the workplace tools did not function in a manner that would be viewed as appropriate.
When we take the view of Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S), the employer should be primarily concerned with ensuring a safe work environment for all staff. Failure for any workplace to have adequate tools and then later chastise staff or placing ongoing pressure upon staff to complete tasks in an unreasonable time frame could trigger that employee to experience unnecessary high levels of anxiety, stress which may even trigger a depressive episode. Thus we could extrapolate from these on going pressures one causation of the employees who breaks down may be attributed to an unsafe workplace environment because the tools provided were causing the ongoing stress and have either led to or exacerbated a mental health condition all because the tools were unsuitable. Especially if staff have been performance managed due to the employees not fullfilling task quotas.
Their is sufficient research evidence supporting the fact micromanagement has a detrimental affect on staff morale, employee mental health, it’s connection to bullying, killing off individuality and creativity thus hampering potential positive interactions which would normally benefit the company as a whole. It is only natural to assume lower employee morale, increased dissatisfaction and declining motivation will all add up to higher staffing losses and increased sick leave. Micromanagement within the workforce appears to have various definitions, however I would characterise micromanagement as superior forces who monitor and scrutinise a large proportion of the subservient employees task completion, work status and / or work performance. The interesting thing about micromanagement is it infers mistrust towards staff and it leads to bottlenecks which slows workplace productivity because the procedures tend to be a linear centralized approval system prior to moving the task to the next step.
Probably the best analogy I could offer here is to imagine two types of traffic flow. The first traffic flow is a highway which does not have any traffic lights between point A and point B, thus to get to point B the journey is faster, more efficient and is not hindered. The second traffic flow example implements a new system I.e 10 traffic lights each having atleast a 1 minute wait for the lights to change before we are granted permission for us to move through the traffic intersection and continue on with our journey. It doesn’t take a genius to quickly realise this second traffic flow example not only takes longer to traverse, the stop start is likely to use more fuel, cause greater frustration waiting for each traffic light to turn green not to mention increase the rates of accidents and cause more wear on the vehicle. On the upside micromanagement alleviates the blame from the employee once the manager grants permission to continue.
Another analogy could also be if I have to send a letter however before I post the letter I need to get prior approval. More time is wasted to get in touch with the supervisor, wait for a response regarding the content in the letter and then finally complete and send the letter out. But what if that supervisor is off sick that day? Now I will have to wait for that supervisor to return to work which will delay the process at least 1 day. Or as an alternative, find out who else I can ask to get the permission to send the letter. I believe this example demonstrates an absolute total waste of time and very inefficient if you already have competent and well trained staff. A staff member that is valued, trusted and more to the point competent will just do the letter and send the letter out without issue and will not require that letter to be micromanaged. Therefore if an organisation has an incompetent staff member who cant be trusted, the responsibility rests with the job interviewer (usually management) who permitted that staff member to work in the first place. Thus hiring competent employees for the right tasks is very important.
The classic old “Bundy clock ” is often sold as a concept for an organisation to keep track of employee arrival and exiting times in the workplace. The traditional “Bundy Clock” is not necessarily a bad concept because it can quickly identify unreliable employees who habitually arrive at work late or frequently take sick leave. The newer electronic systems in place increases record accuracy and reduces the length of time it takes to calculate the number of hours worked per employee. The Bundy clock is best used as a legal record of the date and times the staff are present at the workplace which staff would generally accept this as a plausible reason to use such devices. As times have changed, so has the “Bundy clock” where it was initially a insert card / hole punch or insert card / date time stamp have now evolved into forms such as incorporating finger print scanning and even the use of computers to enter pin numbers with a specific employee number assigned to each staff member.
Depending how ‘tight and inflexible’ the employer may wish to be, the bundy clock can also be used as a punitive means to penny pinch the employee in an attempt to save money via a process called ‘payment docking’. For those who may be unfamiliar with the ‘payment docking’ terminology, it is a process which permits the organisation to not pay any monies due to lateness because the employee has not actually worked for that time. In my own personal experiences I have only been employed by one company who practices payment docking if the staff member is minimally late. Payment docking will no doubt be touted as a means to demonstrate fiscal responsibility and while the legal position may well be on the organisation side, what the law doesn‘t factor is the employee morale.
To put it another way, if an employee is 5 minutes late once every while their are things we could consider prior to deciding to dock wages.
As we can see, an organisation may have a very reliable and flexible employee who may have been 5 -15 minutes late for what ever reason and is rarely late. While legally the organisation could dock an employees pay, the reality is if they were to pay dock the employer may be potentially shooting themselves in the foot for no other reason other than the pay docking may disrupt the employees positive additude or positive ideologies about the work place. Any person who feels something unjust has occurred to them will inevitably feel dejected. Conversely, if an employee is frequently late 5 minutes, then it would be reasonable to dock the wage because that time would add up to a fair amount over the course of months or a year. The employee who is frequently arriving late would be more aligned with the fairness of payment docking.
Many people question whether ‘pay docking’ is legal. However in Australia it is legal because the organisation is not actually ‘deducting’ money from the employee‘s wage because the employee hadn’t actually worked that time. I would say majority of employees would not question the actual action of payment docking if an employee frequently arrives late. Although what would be up for general debate is what period of lateness is mutually agreed upon and when payment docking starts. You will find Authoritarian employers will try to dock as little as the first 1 ‐ 2 minutes of being late. While other organisations may dock after 7 ‐ 15 minutes of being late. While some other organisations have a more liberal approach and tend to over look minor or infrequent lateness especially if nothing is urgent at the time. Hence this is the quandary management needs to introspectively question when is the right time, and at what time does the employee feel the docking pay is an unreasonable time that wont cause the employee to become resentful thus hurting morale. Is it really worth saving 5 minutes in docking an employee’s wage to save the organisation a couple of dollars, and push that reliable employee to become unhappy or to question the orgianisation ideals even feel hard done by?
The accounts and authoritarian management departments may view payment docking as justified, however if it contributes to lowering morale surely the hidden costs to payment docking will only hurt the organisation more. For example the employee may take a sick day off out of resentment, the pay dock may push the staff member to feel misunderstood and to cease to care, go slow or enter a tit for tat spat. So lets look at pay docking objectively and ask the question, how much more would the organisation truly lose by trying to Grinch those few dollars? The math is basic, imagine a reliable employee who is 15 minutes late and they are normally paid $20 per hour. Accounts tells us to dock the 15 minute because $5 is a good saving. But lets say that staff member decided to say ‘i’ll get you back’ and takes a day off work ‘sick leave’. That $5 saving has now cost the organisation 1 full day loss of productivity + 7.5 hours x $20 per hour = $150 sick leave entitlement + Superannuation + that days portion of annual leave. I know I know, it really doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, sometimes it’s just better to have a quiet word with the staff member and speak to them about being late and forgo the 15 min of infrequent lateness. As we can see their is a stark difference between an authoritarian and flexible management style.
An interesting phenomenon worthy to mention here is the more reliable the staff member who historically has rarely done anything wrong, may actually personalise the payment docking more so than the employee who is frequently late and frequently being pay docked. So when I said at the beginning of the article good management is about people skills, I do really mean it’s about understanding people, how to relate with staff and understand and predict how they will respond to maximise productivity when possible, not rule in ways which alienate management from the employees. This is not to say a workplace should not have boundaries because that it self would prompt staff to haphazardly take advantage of the organisation and also contribute to lower productivity.
Perhaps the more extreme issues plaguing some work environments now a days are the use of Bundy Clocks being used to time employees taking toilet breaks which no doubt is likely to result in a punitive measure and is aligned to an Authoritarian management style.
Identification of weaknesses is the first step to creating a more efficient workforce. Only once we have identified weaknesses, management can then progress to formulate an effective training plan to strengthen and increase task proficiency. Some management fail to invest in taking the time to develop staff weaknesses due to insufficent employee training. Failure in recognising staffing strengths could be as simple as having an employee who has certain skills doing other tasks that would otherwise normally increase productivity if they were to do the task the employee was proficient in the first place. An example could be a person who had 4 years computing and hardware experience preforming stocktaking and warehousing duties, while the person serving the clients and selling items may have 6 months sales experience and no IT equipment experience. The person who has the more knowledge could be better utilised to train others or selling products on the floor because they are likely to be able to communicate knowledge to the customer in a succinct manner in addition to being able to accurately make comparisons between products which encourages the customer to purchase the products.
It is standard practice for all organisations to have a steady work flow to maximise efficiencies, however where I am highlighting the issue of inflexibility is to understand their are occasions things occur outside of the employees control. Some organisaions may market a “work life balance“ to hide inflexibility, i.e if you came to work 10 minutes early or worked back 15 minutes later to finalise some documents is ignored and payment docking for having and extra 5 minutes lunch break occurs.
Their are no rules stating a workplace must be flexable at all, however it all amounts to keeping the peace and understanding variances will occur within reason. Thus flexible workplaces will tend to find happier employees, increased productivity, have less staffing losses, staff who feel the employer understands them and cares, not to mention employees who are happier will go the extra mile for the organisation.
The days of having a job and staying until retirement is pretty rare these days, thus leaving a job is generally an inevitable end phase of any employment. However the reasons behind why the employee is resigning is another thing altogether. In some organisations with high staff turnover you may have noticed employees habitually disappearing from the workplace with out any word? Perhaps their is a weird last minute announcement the employee is leaving which catches everyone by surprise, while other times staff may even be advised by management not to discuss their resignations with other staff. Leaving a job shouldn’t be a mysterious event and by telling staff to omit the fact they are leaving will raise more questions and discussion between other staff than if a resignation was freely announced in the first place. Ultimately if the organisation is telling employees not to discuss their resignation, not only does this signal a red flag, it may also signal an attempt to hide large numbers of staffing losses. Granted it may be possible telling staff not to disclose resignations may be an attempt to prevent morale being affected, however if higher employee losses lurk in the shadows it is highly unlikely the inferred silence is for a positive reason.
This is an interesting area to take notice when applying for work in any organisation. The ultimate rule of thumb is regardless of the reason which has been suggested to you, frequent numbers of staff turn over ALWAYS signal all is not right within the workplace. I have heard countless times people excusing the inability to retain staff as “It‘s industry wide, it‘s typical in this field of employment, the job is high stressed so what do you expect”. However more times than not, the core feature of high staffing losses is the simple fact the employee is not feeling adequately supported and is unhappy to remain in that role. It really is that simple and the only way to attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of staff is to closely examine what the reasons are provided by the staff leaving.
The truth of the matter is people as a whole are quite resilient and will take a couple of knock backs once a while in the work place if they believe they will still be able to succeed in their employment and the purpose of employment still maintains a satisfactory level of lifestyle. I am not saying everyone will coexist in a Utopian workplace environment, in fact you will find from day to day the odd issue will arise e.g different personality conflicts etc. However what I am saying is high rates of staff turnover really equates to each staff member resigning because they have reached their tolerance of workplace issues which have led to sufficient distress and the employee feels their are better options available elsewhere than to remain in a job they are unhappy with. Another reason for high staff turn over is the issue that management is not selecting the right candidates for the tasks. Either way you look at it, these issues are still relating to management issues.
The human is a social animal, it is also an animal which typically follows similar behvaioural patterns purely out of familiarity. We understand this by reflecting upon typical behavioural patterns where a person is likely to keep using the first chosen toilet stall repeatedly for reasons due to familiarity or routine alone than any other reason. This behvaioural phenomenon teaches us people will generally opt towards or stay in employment roles more so because they are familiar with the employment role than move because often people don’t like change or uncertainty. Unless of course other motivating factors have increased to sufficient levels which warrants a change i.e boredom of task, higher wages elsewhere, escaping high workload laden jobs, ongoing interpersonal conflicts, learned helplessness, strict ruling of the organisation, inability to progress or strive for promotions, and of course if the job is causing the employee to feel devalued or not respected etc.
Identifying what motivates staff is an important attribute if one is to retain staff. Not all staff are motivated the same way, thus treating staff as if they are all motivated the same way is likely to lead to loss of staff prematurely. If your reading a novel and the content is bland, uninteresting and has nothing that raises an eye brow. The book is likely to be shelved and never opened again. The same can be said for the failure to understand staff motivators.
Trust
If one does not feel they are trusted they will forever feel they are being watched, monitored which does not leave one to feel comfortable in the workplace. I tend to believe if management can not trust their staff then the wrong employees have been brought into the organisation via the management interview process.
Incentivisation
Incentivisation is frequently paired with (KPI) and if used correctly incentivisation is quite an effective motivator I.e if you can sell 10 items per hour you will obtain a bonus of $100. Incentivisation is most effective to motivate those who are centrally focusing financial rewards or higher wages. However incentivisation has been known to transgress into poor business practices which could be seen during the failures of ENRON.
Morale and peer connection
This is often an overlooked motivator which can increase morale. Lets face it, generally speaking no one wants to be at work however who we are working with will have a direct relationship to our emotional state at work and happily completing work tasks. Therefore if we find in certain staff morale declining, the allocation of certain staff with strong peer relationships is one way to help motivate people while increasing productivity.
Purpose
Some staff are not interested in the financial gain, in this case employees sense of purpose in their role is what might be motivating them to do the job. For example: one may not necessarily be paid much for handing out ‘save Africa leaflets’ however because the cause is humanitarian and a positive action one may push aside a lower rate of pay knowing they are doing something good. Staff who aligned themselves within this category may not necessarily be motivated by financial reward or promotion alone. This is because the act of doing a good deed out weighs the need for financial gain.
Positive workplace
All the positiveness in the workplace will amount to nothing if an employee feels like they have a gun to their head. Keeping a positive work environment is essential to maintain staff morale. Conversely if staff morale dips so will the positive energy and attendance rates.
Challenging environment or tasks
Some staff enjoy challenging tasks which incorporate variety and problem solving while others my much prefer sedatory and monotonous work tasks instead. Challenging work environments alleviate boredom, increase alertness and morale because the employee interaction in task completion if seen to be an active adjunct to the solution. Therefore failure in recognising the innate behvaiour and motivations of staff such as placing an employee who is not confident in a position that requires a great deal of responsibility could cause greater loss of confidence.
Holiday periods
Minimising or restricting holiday length may be suited for the company, however may act as a demotivator to a person who likes to explore and requires greater holiday periods. Thus in these circumstances you will find employees who fit within this category will tend to leave the job when they organise holidays because the value of life experiences and exploring is internally higher.
Fundamentally speaking, the construct of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is multi‐faceted and are measurement tools regarding the employees performance within the organisation. (KPI) can be used to make comparisons between staff i.e employee (a) is selling 5 items an hour, while employee (b) is consistently selling 10 items an hour. (KPI) is often linked to employee bonus systems as an attempt to motivate the employee to increase their performance in order to get a positive reinforcer. While the whole concept of a business is to turn over a profit, some organisations may increase targets too high which cause the staff member to cease trying to reach their targets because they feel it‘s either no longer possible or the goal is constantly moved further away and the rewards are far too distant to achieve. Obviously the reason targets are constantly reviewed and increased by management is for the organisiation to continue to push the employee to obtain higher goals which is more profitable for the company. However on the flip side, high KPI targets which are not reached means the organisation will also save money because they are not paying any bonuses out.
The ongoing trend of trying and trying and yet rarely or never achieving that goal is likely to create a state of burn out or learned helplessness. Where, the staff member no longer tries to reach or exceed the (KPI) target because ‘whats the point of trying if I never get that bonus’. Thus while KPI‘s are designed to measure a staff members actual performance they also have to ability to harm instead of motivating if used incorrectly. In a term that I call ‘the double slap’ is where the organisation increases KPI targets too high causing the employee to miss the target or seen to not be achieving the necessary goals. Management at some point in time proceed to chastise the employee for under performing. Hence the double slap is 1) the increased KPI which is unattainable and 2) the Employee is chastised for not meeting the quota. This type of punitive measure will not obviously do any favors if one is trying to use (KPI) to increase staff productivity.
Nit picking is a term whereby the staff member frequently receives ongoing criticism regarding minor issues which over time is likely to make the staff member feel they can do no right. Nit picking is just another term for high frequency of criticism and bullying which is not obviously going to raise morale.
Any organisation who changes the rules often or tends to have inconsistent rules throughout the organisation will create a workplace full of confusion and while inadvertently increasing the chances of errors. Generally speaking, increased errors will result in a manager needing to pull the staff member aside and query why so many errors are being made, which may escalate to the implementation of performance plans being issued which tends to demotivated the staff member.
If we use the analogy of having a packet of matches to light a fire we have a couple of options available 1) use one match at a time, 2) ignite the while box in the one go. As mentioned previously, some organisations are only interested in achieving the end goal at any cost. Usually that cost comes at the expense of higher staff turn over, increased sick leave and burn out. Once the staff member ceases to perform as expected, the organisation many look at performance plans to try and ‘flog’ the staff member to improve. Failing improvement usually results in the loss of employment.
I’ve seen this occur in the past, whereby an organisation eludes to the possibility of a wage increase or a promotion to encourage the employee to work harder, only to have the opportunity ripped out from under neath their feet at the last minute. Worse is to use the promotion as a stick to waive around in a punitive manner e.g ‘If you don’t do x.y.z you will not get the promotion’. While an employee may achieve the goal in completing a given task by a due date, the failure to follow through with the carrot causes the employee to become resentful which may later manifest into distrust or loss of interest which further erodes workplace productivity. The irony with the Carrot on the stick approach is one could quiet easily make similar comparisons with the core tenets of psychological abuse.
It is not uncommon to find the phrase “is able to work independently” within job advertisements. However in some workplaces the word ‘independently’ is confused with ‘solitary’. The word independently infers the employee is able to work unsupervised not in complete isolation without any input. A good manager will always check in with staff periodically to see if there are any issues, and to see if the staff member is coping. The basic ‘check in’ simultaneously signifies interest towards that employee’s current condition. While managers tend to forget due their other duties, it is always important to remember humans are social beings, thus a basic check in demonstrates an interest in the person, provides a chance to clarify any concerns, creates the development of social inter-relations and of course fills the staff members internal need of being wanted and having a purpose. In simple terms, staff feel they matter, not just thrown in to do a job like a robot.
With the advances of technology, organisations may slip into behaviours which depersonalise the significance of achievement through adopting primary communication methods such as emails and text messaging. Such messaging are also used as a modality to disperse orders for employees to follow. Larger organisations who have multiple offices or large numbers of employees are likely to fall into ‘messaging for convenience trap’. While admittedly messaging via technological means is very convenient, the problem with the reliance of technology to communicate messages is that it is a very cold medium and doesn‘t provide the warmth which is normally expressed via person to person communication. In additional to the possible issue of how the message is interpreted depends upon the employees state of mind at the time when reading such messages. If for what ever the reason an employee is unhappy with the person who is initially sending the message, the message will be read and generally interpreted in a negative mindset. Likewise, receiving words of encouragement are not be nearly as meaningful via technological messages if compared to spoken directly face to face.
Any time you are present in the workplace that is required prior to the start time or after the finish time the employee is legally working thus payment for this time should ensue under Australian law. I.e If Bert was required to start work at 9am, although his employer needed him to attend the office to tidy the office up 5 minutes before or be in the office 5 minutes before to log into a computer, this 5 minutes is actually classified as work. Thus if Bert worked 6 days a week, their should be an extra 30 min of payment in the wage. Any employees who have disputes with Australian employee’s can always speak with Fairwork Australia.
I will keep this one short and simple. Under no circumstance are you obligated to permit your employer permission to speak with your doctor or even attend their office without your consent. It is just simply not a requirement. The fairwork.gov.au website clearly confirms this by stating under the heading ‘Employers attending medical appointments’:
This article has explored various areas of mismanagement which is likely to impinge on staff retention in any workforce. If your being employed by an organisation which sees many staff exiting there is most probably a good reason for this even if your not aware of the real underlying reasons. At the end of the day, staff who are happy with their workplace colleagues, work environment and pay will stay embedded in the job for long periods of time because there is no reason to move. Humans by nature flock to safe environments, thus if the workplace is managed correctly staff retention will be high.
To date I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of employment sectors I.e manufacturing, pet care, Mental Health, employment services and I have seen the different styles of employee interactions and of course the differences between management styles. To date I have only experienced one workplace which exhibited high staff turn over and one thing I had noticed there was a somewhat different perception of what management acknowledges and how the staff felt they had been treated. It would be of no surprise when I say the staff often commented being under valued, misunderstood and felt their pay was insufficient if compared to the market or in comparison to responsibility / work load. Additionally the procedural micromanagement and hard lined management attitudes were also poinient issues breeding employee resentment. Not to mention having lowered morale within the workforce which is exacerbated due to the frequency of coworker loss. Perhaps the discourse between the two realities of employees and management where the staff are unlikely to openly step up and state their concerns with management as they are fearful of being bullied out or may lose their job.
The irony here is if business treat staff members fairly, select the right employee of the task, provide acceptable training and allow workplace flexibility, reduce stress providing the right tools for the job, the net result is likely to see higher staff retention, less cost and time spent on retraining new staff to replace older staff thus increase the bottom dollar value of the company as a whole.
When all things are said and done, if you the worker are not happy with your current employment arrangements their are four choices always available. 1) do nothing and just work, 2) study to open up alternative employment opportunities, 3) take the risk and speak up or 4) immediately start looking for alternative employment and once found submit your resignation.
Until next time...
Darren Hamburger
Page Last update:01/07/2018
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