10 Stupid Things Managers Do To Mess Up Employee Relations

Even the best organizations make mistakes when dealing with employees by messing up their opportunity to create effective, successful, and positive employee relations. These organizations invest vast amounts of energy in actions that ensure employees are unhappy.

For example, they treat their employees like children and then ask why employees fail to live up their expectations. I watch as managers play favourites, apply different rules to different employees, and wonder why the workplace morale is so low. I observe employees working hard only to infrequently receive positive feedback.

Here are ten other stupid mistakes managers make to mess up their relationships with the people they employ:

• Fail to create standards and give employees clear expectations so they know what they are supposed to do. The manager then wonders why they fail.
• Ask employees for their opinions, ideas, and continuous improvement suggestions, and fail to implement their suggestions or empower them to do so. Better yet, they do not even provide feedback about whether the idea was considered or why it was rejected – it goes into a “suggestion black hole.”
• Make a decision and then ask employees for their input as if their feedback mattered.
• Find a few employees are breaking the rules and company policy and then chastise all employees at company meetings rather than dealing directly with the rule breakers. Better yet, make everyone wonder who the “bad guy” is. Best yet; make up another policy to punish everyone.
• Treat employees as if they are untrustworthy by watching them, admonishing them for every failing and doing this because a few people have been dishonest.
• Create policies for every contingency which allows very little management latitude in addressing individual employee needs.
• Conversely, having so few policies that employees feel as if they reside in a free-for-all environment of favoritism and unfair treatment.
• Ask employees to change the way they do something without providing the big picture of what is being accomplished by the change. Label them “resisters” and send them to change management classes when they do not immediately accept the change.
• Expect that employees learn by doing everything right the first time rather than recognizing that learning occurs most frequently from one’s mistakes.
• Letting an employee fail when they had information that could have helped them in making a better decision.

The next time you are confronted with these employee issues – ask yourself – is the action likely to create the result for powerfully motivating employees? If the answer is “No”, you need to rethink your strategy so you can avoid these employee relations mistakes.

Source Patricia Knight Blog