Why Outdated Management Policies are Making the Labor Shortage Worse
Believe it or not, the following scenario still takes place in many businesses, despite the severe worker shortages affecting many industries:
- An employee brings up an issue during a preshift meeting.
- The manager ignores what the employee said and continues talking.
- The employee brings up the issue again.
- The manager interrupts the employee, saying that he has to figure out how to deal with the issue.
- The employee becomes upset with the manager’s arrogant attitude and starts arguing with the manager.
- Other employees also start arguing with the manager.
- The manager tells the first employee that he is suspended pending termination, and tells him to leave.
- The following week another employee quits in retaliation, leaving the warehouse crew severely understaffed.
An issue that could have been easily resolved turns into a major labor relations problem, and causes a complete loss of trust in management.
This outdated, short-sighted style of management is eventually going to cost businesses millions of dollars in lost sales and profits, as more and more workers move on to companies with more enlightened labor relations policies.
Employers Need to Wake Up
Despite the overwhelming amount of news and information available today on the changes taking place in society, and in the workforce, many businesses continue to use employment policies from 30 or 40 years ago.
This is not limited to only small businesses. I’ve worked in multinational companies where it seems like managers have no clue how to deal with common issues and conflicts that take place in every business.
I routinely saw skilled, productive employees leave only after a few weeks on the job—usually because of minor problems that were improperly handled by their bosses.
What is ironic is that making a few simple changes to their outdated policies would allow employers: to retain the best workers, lower hiring costs, increase productivity, and increase profits. Amazingly, most employers insist on enforcing old rules despite knowing how costly it is to them.
Company Rules Need to Allow for Flexibility
Many companies are still enforcing policies from twenty years ago! Society has changed considerably in that time, and it’s been proven that a harsh, disciplinarian corporate culture tends to push away the best employees.
Managers and supervisors need to have the ability the use their judgment when dealing with employees who violate the rules.
There are times when suspending an employee, for example, is more reasonable than firing him / her, even if company policy calls for termination.
It makes more sense to consider the employee’s overall performance and behavior in the past, and decide whether to overlook an occasional violation.
Flexible Policies Help to Retain Employees
Having flexible policies doesn’t apply only to violating the rules. Rules relating to vacation time and benefits eligibility can help increase employee loyalty.
If a manager wants to encourage a new employee to stay with the company, he /she should be able to offer benefits sooner than what the official policy states.
Being more flexible is even more important today, where worker shortages are common in many industries.
Businesses Need to Develop Better Managers
Training new managers to develop a few basic skills could help to drastically reduce turnover, improve morale, and boost worker productivity.
All of this can be accomplished without employers having to offer huge pay increases or excessively generous benefits.
Some of the skills that managers need to develop include:
- Listening to employees’ concerns, even if nothing can be done about specific issues
- Being more open about the reasons behind certain policies, or the reason for changes in procedures.Hiding information only leads to more conflict and lack of trust in management.
- Learning how to effectively deal with minor disciplinary issues, instead of terminating good employees.
- Knowing how to use neutral words and statements, instead of using accusatory language.
- Disciplining individual employees who break the rules, instead of punishing entire crews with stricter regulations.
- Knowing when it makes sense to enforce regulations and when it’s alright to let things go.
- Understanding how worker shortages lead to low morale, higher costs, and lower productivity.
- Learning how to keep tense interactions from getting out of control.
- Being able to tell whether poor employee performance is due to poor training, or if it’s caused by a poor attitude.
These skills need to be taught to every manager or supervisor who joins a company. It’s also a good idea to have managers occasionally review these skills through online training courses.
Develop a Knowledge Management System
Ensuring that managers receive proper training on interpersonal skills doesn’t have to be complex and expensive.
There are many e-learning websites such as Udemy and LinkedIn that provide affordable training in management, soft skills, and leadership.
Building a knowledge management system provides managers with a centralized place where they can look up specific procedures and guidelines for dealing with specific challenges they might face on the job.
There are inexpensive knowledge management system vendors, such as Zoho Wiki, that make it easy to create private knowledge bases that can be shared by all supervisors and managers.
Conclusion
Businesses need to realize that simply throwing more money at their employees isn’t going to make up for a bad work environment.
Younger generations of workers expect their bosses to have more emotional intelligence and the soft skills to deal with unforeseen situations that may impact their employees.
Even the best employees may have an emotional outburst when dealing with difficult challenges. They shouldn’t be disciplined the same way as an employee who routinely violates the rules and disrespects management.
Even if one or two employees take advantage of an employer’s goodwill, that doesn’t mean everyone else should be punished for it.
Having flexible company policies simply makes more sense in the long run.
In order for flexible policies to work effectively, managers need to have the training and skills to use their judgment when deciding how to implement a specific policy to a specific situation.
As most companies in the technology industry have shown, implementing flexible and reasonable policies lead to:
– Productive and loyal employees
– Better relationships between management and employees
– Greater ability to attract good employees
– Lower human resources costs
Taking these steps is much less time-consuming and stressful than dealing with the consequences of old fashioned and misguided company policies that lead to constant turnover and instability.
Mark Bellini
Life Coaching — Small Business Marketing Consulting
If you are uncertain about how life coaching can help you, please download my free guide Maslow’s Self-Actualization – Your guide to personal development.
