How Managers Are Causing Employee Disengagement

I wrote a post on my safety blog yesterday about the inherent problem with many corporate safety managers. In it, I made the point that Safety Managers, although well meaning, can sometimes sanitize a workplace so well (to be free of hazards and risks) that the employee doesn't need to worry about it - or think about it for that matter. And that's when trouble can begin. When workers don't think about their own safety, they open themselves to real danger.

But it's not just in safety that this is happening. Organizations are building processes and policies that are meant to be dummy-proof. Their employees don't even have to think about what they are doing because all they have to do is follow the procedure - the thinking has already been done for them. What you end up with is a bunch of mindless workers who simply check their brains at the door and become living examples of the walking dead.

Yet, in the same breath, managers complain about Employee Engagement levels and how their people aren't engaging as well anymore. On the one hand managers create foolproof procedures and policies by proactively doing the thinking for their people and in the same breath, managers complain that their people don't seem to care about the work they do. Why don't workers care? Because the work's not challenging that's why. They don't have to think. You, as a manager, somehow don't believe they are capable of thinking for themselves so you don't even let them try.

Take away the need to use one's brain and you take away the challenge of the work. Take away the challenge and people actively disengage.

So what can you do? You can stop telling your people how to do it and ask them how they would do it. It forces them to think. When they think, they engage.

Stop operating like an over-protective parent who childproofs the house resulting a world free of dangers and consequences. (Yep, that'll prepare a kid for the real world - sarcasm). Stop dummy-proofing your department. You want your people to mess up. People learn from messing up. Let them be who they are and then, as manager, help them get better by inspiring them to think for themselves.