Bad managers rely on snitches to dob in slackers
Functional workplaces don’t have many idlers, writes Jim Bright.
Have you ever wondered why a device that tells the time is a called a watch?
Well, the answer for some managers is that its primary purpose is to use it to watch your colleagues and dob in any who appear to be slacking off.
Slacking off, of course, means doing something the snitch secretly yearns to do but feels powerless to enact. Therefore there is nothing for it but to dob in the miscreants to the boss. Apparently managers are actually asking their staff members to dob in slack colleagues.
I wonder what is going on in organisations if management deems slacking so prevalent that it must resort to employing its own
OPINION:
secret police to dob in offenders. If the problem is that widespread, it speaks to a major crisis in the culture of any organisation, and to the significant failures of management to build a culture of engagement or to recruit the right types of workers in the first place.
I wonder why management has such poor processes in place that they are unable to keep track of their employees, and they are unable to measure their performance against clearly expressed and agreed key performance indicators.
In other words, relying on their staff to dob in slack colleagues gives the unfortunate impression that it is the managers who are slacking off instead of managing, and who are abdicating their responsibilities to their staff.
True idlers and lead-swingers at work are a real pain for other staff. However, in most functional workplaces they are in the minority and are easy for even the laziest managers to spot.
Any decent human resources function would have in place clear, fair and effective processes to manage such staff through feedback, coaching, training, accommodations (for instance if the employee’s behaviour is a symptom of a more significant personal or work problem), and ultimately dismissal.
This system works, but it takes skilled managers who are prepared to have difficult conversations, and who will report to their seniors that not all is well on their watch. A lot of managers lack these skills or intestinal fortitude in this regard, and that goes back to culture, training and selection.
Setting up one worker against the next is a recipe for distrust and undermines teamwork far more than any social loafer ever does. It also gives the green light to bullies to use the snitching policy to pursue agendas and vendettas.
What will happen after a report is received? Instigate a lengthy discovery and evidence-gathering process and all those involved are effectively taken offline, distracted by the inquiry – which is a huge loss in productivity.
Or dismiss the report and the leave the whistleblower exposed to animosity and possible bullying themselves, while emboldening the slackers.
Managers tell me that very often a colleague who may appear to be slacking in the eyes of their peers may in fact be contributing just as effectively but in less obvious or visible ways, or may be dealing with major issues that they do not wish to share with their colleagues more broadly.
I personally experienced that with a dear colleague who worked as best they could till near the very end of their terminal cancer but who did not wish for that diagnosis to be widely known.
We have developed far more effective management techniques since the time and motion movement of a century ago, and good managers use more enlightened approaches. As to those who do not, all I can say is: Watch your back.
–Sydney Morning Herald
Jim Bright is a professor of career education and development at Australian Catholic University and owns Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy.
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