Investor's Business Daily, August 24th, 2007
"How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways." This reversal of lines written by the 19th century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning might serve as the epithet for Bruce L. Katcher's "30 Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers."
Katcher shows that managers often snub and ignore employees. This triggers countless issues including turnover and lost productivity.
But rather than blaming managers or employees, Katcher, an industrial psychologist who does surveys for corporations and is based in Sharon, Mass., considers such tension to be natural and expected.
"Management doesn't understand the fate of employees or what it's like working in the trenches, and employees don't understand the pressures on managers," Katcher said.
Managers are exposed to stock market demands, financial imperatives and pressure from immediate bosses and CEOs. Employees are increasingly affected and demoralized by downsizing, rightsizing, buyouts and layoffs. "Since they are exposed to different information, they see the world differently," he said. People who view the world in alternative ways often don't trust one another.
Though Katcher's book is answer-oriented and suggests ways to improve a tough situation, he paints a bleak view of relations between most managers and employees.
He refers to two employee surveys conducted by his firm: one says that 46% are treated with disrespect by their managers. The other notes that 48% of employees are afraid to express their opinion to their manager.
Belittling employees and stifling communication easily lead to strife and resentment.
Workers Feel Trapped
In fact, Katcher stresses that many employees feel as if they're treated like slaves. He explains that employees "are told what to, when to do it, and where they should be. When you work for an organization, you surrender freedom and autonomy."
Many employees feel trapped and resigned to their loss of independence.
What's the result of employees' animosity on a firm's bottom line? Katcher said, "People aren't as motivated or engaged and won't be as productive." If people got respect, were empowered to find solutions and listened to when they make suggestions, productivity would rise and a company's revenue likely would take off.
Too often managers see issues from their standpoint 14d not the employee's.
Katcher, for example, consulted for a construction company in which managers had just issued a vision statement. The human resources unit then used the vision statement as a basis for an employee survey.
Because most employees felt that managers were trying to brainwash them, they refused to cooperate. Finally HR relented and rewrote the survey, looking at it from an employees' view regarding pay, benefits and treatment. Employees responded enthusiastically.
Katcher contrasts the attitude and drive of self-employed workers to corporate employees. Most self-employed people are highly motivated and work harder than they ever did at a company. Since they're self-directed and reaping the rewards of their work, they feel self-satisfied. Hence Katcher concluded, "Managers need to respect employees and give them autonomy, not a rule book bigger than the Manhattan phone book." If managers can be flexible about employee autonomy such as when and how people work, productivity will rise.
One of the Katcher's main themes is managers need to treat their employees as adults. Trust them rather than micromanage. Give them more chances to find solutions rather than telling them exactly what to do. Treat them as professionals not like children who get their hands slapped if they make a minor error.
In doing surveys, one refrain that Katcher hears is that managers don't listen to employees. Managers that build strong and positive relationships with employees "do a lot of listening," Katcher declared. In fact, Katcher belittles companies that think they can solve problems by creating an open door policy or circulating suggestion boxes throughout the company. If open communication really is thriving at a company, it often arises naturally.
Employees Overlooked
Another recurring gripe of many workers is that their hard work goes unnoticed. Even when firms introduce recognition programs, they often do more harm than good.
"If you give recognition to one person, two people are going to be jealous or resentful," Katcher notes. Instead, he recommends day-to-day recognition by managers, telling employees when they've done a good job, contributed to the company's overall goals or achieved something unusual.
Asked what three big changes he'd suggest at most firms to improve manager/employee relationships, Katcher starts with encouraging managers to do a better job of listening.
Listening to employees shows respect and builds trust, he says. If managers are pompous, shut workers out and bellow orders, tension only grows.
Second, the more managers can empower employees, give them the tools to do their job well and the freedom to do it, the employee/manager relationship will turn around. Overloading employees with rules almost always inhibits them in their jobs. Last, instilling a common vision among the staff unites them.
For example, he refers to Picerne Military Housing, a private company that builds houses on military bases. The company has done an effective job of instilling the idea that everyone in the company is helping the military, making soldiers' lives easier and supporting their spouses. Even though it's a private, profit-making company, its cause transcends dollars and cents.
"Our mission is very simple: families first. We use it at every level of the company for making decisions from the president and CEO to the maintenance staff," said William Mulvey, its vice president of communications, in Fairfax, Va.
What can other companies which don't build military housing learn from Picerne? "Keep your mission simple and make sure every employee can understand it," Mulvey said.
