Bad Management Creates Disengaged Employees

Employee engagement is already a big enough challenge. And as many solutions as there may be to fixing the employee (since it is widely believed that it is the employee who needs to be engaged - after all it is called "employee engagement"), I believe that an employee will focus and engage when the external forces are right. That means, if there is poor engagement in one department over another, you likely have a management problem. Your managers are disengaging the very people you want to be engaged.

Here's what I mean. A well-meaning and engaged employee shows up to work each day and is constantly pestered by:

• Unnecessary meetings,
• "can you come into my office?"
• "what are you doing for lunch?"
• too many surveys,
• talking loudly outside the office or cubicle doorway,
• random verbal announcements (can I have your attention for a minute),
• Christmas party planning,
• managers who really take the MBWA (Management By Walking Around) far too literally,
• and more.

Add to that the chatter of co-workers, gossip and useless social planning meetings and you have a recipe for, at best, a four-hour workday of productivity. Each interruption requires an employee to have to collect his or her thoughts and re-focus on the original task.

Look, I'm a man. I understand that we're not the greatest multi-taskers so why are you interrupting? (Yes, I know the ladies are snickering here.)

Interruptive and ego-driven managers cause attrition to rise. Want to find your own company's worst offenders? Check your own company's attrition numbers by department. The highest attrition usually means the worst managers.

People don't abandon a good manager; a great boss. People leave lousy, awful, terrible and inept managers.

So if you want to engage your employees, give them a manager that encourages engagement. If you've got high turnover in one department, stop listening to the excuses from that manager and do your own due diligence, before you lose more good people. Change your attitude and engage yourself in solving a recurring problem.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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