So far on this site, we've discussed ways that employers can ruin employee morale. But let's be honest - your managers, try as they might, aren't the only ones who can make you feel like you're serving a jail sentence instead of punching a clock. Your co-workers, while well-intentioned, can also be a drain on your happiness (as well as your sanity).
No matter where you work, no matter what kind of job you do, I guarantee you have a co-worker that drives you nuts. And it's not like they do it on purpose (at least, hopefully they're not doing it on purpose). It's just the way they are.
There are lots of different types of annoying, morale-draining co-workers. We'll discuss a few of them here (feel free to leave a comment if you've got other examples from your job).
- The Guy That Won't Shut Up: This guy (or gal) will stop by the office with nothing to say, yet will find a way to keep talking to you for half an hour. Naturally, this normally happens when you are trying to get a big project done, or preparing for a meeting with the boss. The conversation may start with a work-related topic, but quickly jumps to last night's game, or a movie he just saw, or better yet, his kids. And none of the "this conversation is over" clues that you're dropping are working (you know, things like turning your back to the person and going back to work, or only responding with "yeah" and "uh huh" and not engaging in any real conversation, or faking a seizure). Your only hope is for your telephone to ring so that you have an excuse to escape this dead end discussion.
- The Annoying Pregnant Lady: (This one obviously doesn't apply to everyone who is pregnant) No offense if you're pregnant, it's one of the most beautiful and life-altering experiences in the world. But that doesn't mean we need to hear all the sordid details about how your little bundle-of-joy-to-be is kicking your bladder so hard that you have to pee every hour. Nor do we need to know about the rash you have and how itchy it is. And yes, we understand that you've put on weight - we get it, you're pregnant. And no, we don't want to look at baby names with you on the internet.
- The Fake Punch Guy: You know who I'm talking about. The guy who, instead of just saying hi in the hallway or shaking hands if the occasion calls for it, feels compelled to have a fake sparring session with you in the middle of the office. And what are you supposed to do, just stand there and not react? No, like a fool, you pretend to think it's funny and throw a fake jab or two back his way (although maybe you come a little closer to his chin than you intended - purely a coincidence). Then you walk away hating yourself for the rest of the morning.
- The Lady Who Loves (insert tv show here) And Won't Shut Up About It: This ties in a little bit with The Guy That Won't Shut Up, but this woman is only interested in her show. Maybe it's Oprah, maybe it's Survivor, maybe it's Knight Rider 2000 - whatever it is, she wants to talk to you about it, regardless of whether or not you've seen the show. To her, this show is the greatest thing that television has ever produced, and you're going to know everything about the show whether you want to or not. And telling her that you don't watch the show doesn't help; if anything, it further aggravates the problem because now she feels like she has to catch you up on everything that's happened. Your ideal way out of this problem is to walk this woman over to The Guy That Won't Shut Up and get them talking to each other. That should free you up for at least a couple of hours.
There are many, many other examples of soul-draining co-workers out there, and not enough space in this column to discuss them all. That's where you come in. If you have, or once had, a morale-reducing co-worker, tell us about him/her (please remember to keep this anonymous - don't use more than a first name). Let's see who works with the best of the worst.
So remember, although your boss may be the prime culprit, it's not just management that can have a negative effect on employee morale.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Communication
One of the keys to success for any business, large or small, is effective and timely communication between management and employees. Naturally, this almost never happens.
One of the biggest problems in the workforce today is the lack of communication within a company. This is one of the biggest morale killers employees face. But why does lack of communication have such a negative effect on employee morale?
Let's answer this question by giving some hypothetical examples of poor or non-existent communication. Feel free to adjust these examples to fit your work situation.
Hypothetical Example # 1:
One of the biggest problems in the workforce today is the lack of communication within a company. This is one of the biggest morale killers employees face. But why does lack of communication have such a negative effect on employee morale?
Let's answer this question by giving some hypothetical examples of poor or non-existent communication. Feel free to adjust these examples to fit your work situation.
Hypothetical Example # 1:
Your boss assigns you an important project. Your job is to make sure that project is done on time and accurately. The goal of the project is to organize all of your team's files into different categories, and then to rank those categories from highest priority to lowest priority based on which ones are in need of immediate action. You spend days, if not weeks, working on this project. You get input from all members of your team to try to assess which ones should be considered high priority. After many hours of hard work, you get an email from your boss asking for a progress report. After filling him in on what you're doing, your boss tells you that the project has changed and you were supposed to arrange these files based on their net value, not whether or not they need immediate action. You wasted days worth of work on a project that was doomed from the start. To top it off, your boss says he sent you an email detailing the change - you check your email and there never was a note sent to you.
Hypothetical Example # 2:
Most days, dress attire is "business casual." However, today you're walking around the office and you see one guy wearing a Red Sox hat and someone else sporting a New York Giants football jersey. You ask them why they're wearing these things, and they tell you that today was designated as a "dress down" day. The only problem - your manager never told you about this, so you're the only one in the office wearing a button-up shirt and Dockers on an 80 degree day. Then you notice that your boss is wearing a Yankees hat, which makes sense because he is an idiot and it doesn't surprise you that he would root for a team that is evil.
Hypothetical Example # 3:
It's after lunch and there's a blizzard blowing through, making driving very difficult and ensuring that you have a good three feet of snow to shovel out of your driveway when you get home. Slowly, word starts to spread into your department that other departments are being released early. You have friends in these other departments, so you send a quick email to see if it's true. You find out that not only is it true, they got an email from their manager releasing them at 2 pm. You look up at the clock and it reads 1:45 pm and you've heard absolutely nothing from any manager in your department. You sit at your desk, hating both your manager for holding your fate in limbo and your friends for knowing that they're minutes away from heading home.
In all three of these hypothetical examples, you can see why the employee would be pissed that they're not in the loop. The employee either is finding out important things from other co-workers or not finding out at all. How would you feel if this happened to you? Has this happened to you? I don't know about you, but when I feel like management doesn't care about me (and by not communicating effectively, that's the signal that's sent), I wonder why I should care about doing anything to help management. It has to be a two-way street, and it's no fun driving down a one-way road in the wrong direction.
There are many other examples out there, but I don't want to steal all the thunder. Let's hear your examples of poor communication at the workplace. Share your stories with us by posting a comment.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Micromanaging
If you were to ask 100 different employees to describe their boss using just one word, most of them would answer "evil-spawn-of-Satan" (apparently using dashes makes this a "one word" answer). Those who don't use dashes would probably answer with the word "micromanager."
Look up "micromanager" in any dictionary and you'll find that it means "short manager" or "leader of tiny stature." However, others use this word to describe a boss who not only tells you what to do, but tells you how to do it, when to do it, and why you're doing it wrong.
To many employees, the micromanager is the worst type of boss. People can deal with the boss who takes credit for the team's success, the boss who is never there when you need him, and even the boss who shows up after you and leaves before you. But for most people, there is nothing worse than a micromanager.
Does this situation sound familiar? Your boss gives you an assignment. He wants you to produce the XYZ report for the Big Boss by the end of the day. He gives you instructions on how to get started. As you're starting the first step, your boss (who is still hovering over your shoulder) points out that it might be better to actually skip ahead to the next step because it's easier, even though you know that without doing step one, step two will be three times as hard and take much longer. You finally convince your boss to go bug someone else, only to find him back in your cube half an hour later for a "status update" - as if you'd finish the task and forget to tell him. He then proceeds to look over everything you've done so far and recommends changes to most of what you've done. Worst of all, you've done everything right so far and his recommendations will do more harm than good. When you try to explain this to him, he tells you that he's done this "a million times" and his method is the best way. And when you finally finish the report and it's delivered to the Big Boss, guess who gets the credit? (Hint: It's not you.)
It's a no-win situation. If you listen to your boss, you'll be rewarded with a more difficult and time consuming process, with the added bonus of spending most of your day with him. But you can't just tell your boss to back the hell off and let you do your job. Nor can you say "If you know the best way to do this, why did you bother coming to me?" Well, you could say those things, but you better make sure your resume is up to date.
So what's the best way to deal with a micromanager? There's no easy way to do it, at least not that I know of. Outside of switching jobs or winning the lottery, there probably isn't much you can do. You could try to prove a point to your boss by micromanaging him - stand behind him while he updates his voice mail and tell him to use his "boss voice" because it sounds more authoritative. It has to be something ridiculous and annoying like that because you're trying to prove a point, although there's a good chance that your boss will completely miss the point.
Have you worked for a micromanager, or do you work for one now? How do you handle it? Share your stories and your suggestions on how to deal with them.
Look up "micromanager" in any dictionary and you'll find that it means "short manager" or "leader of tiny stature." However, others use this word to describe a boss who not only tells you what to do, but tells you how to do it, when to do it, and why you're doing it wrong.
To many employees, the micromanager is the worst type of boss. People can deal with the boss who takes credit for the team's success, the boss who is never there when you need him, and even the boss who shows up after you and leaves before you. But for most people, there is nothing worse than a micromanager.
Does this situation sound familiar? Your boss gives you an assignment. He wants you to produce the XYZ report for the Big Boss by the end of the day. He gives you instructions on how to get started. As you're starting the first step, your boss (who is still hovering over your shoulder) points out that it might be better to actually skip ahead to the next step because it's easier, even though you know that without doing step one, step two will be three times as hard and take much longer. You finally convince your boss to go bug someone else, only to find him back in your cube half an hour later for a "status update" - as if you'd finish the task and forget to tell him. He then proceeds to look over everything you've done so far and recommends changes to most of what you've done. Worst of all, you've done everything right so far and his recommendations will do more harm than good. When you try to explain this to him, he tells you that he's done this "a million times" and his method is the best way. And when you finally finish the report and it's delivered to the Big Boss, guess who gets the credit? (Hint: It's not you.)
It's a no-win situation. If you listen to your boss, you'll be rewarded with a more difficult and time consuming process, with the added bonus of spending most of your day with him. But you can't just tell your boss to back the hell off and let you do your job. Nor can you say "If you know the best way to do this, why did you bother coming to me?" Well, you could say those things, but you better make sure your resume is up to date.
So what's the best way to deal with a micromanager? There's no easy way to do it, at least not that I know of. Outside of switching jobs or winning the lottery, there probably isn't much you can do. You could try to prove a point to your boss by micromanaging him - stand behind him while he updates his voice mail and tell him to use his "boss voice" because it sounds more authoritative. It has to be something ridiculous and annoying like that because you're trying to prove a point, although there's a good chance that your boss will completely miss the point.
Have you worked for a micromanager, or do you work for one now? How do you handle it? Share your stories and your suggestions on how to deal with them.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Reviews
In an effort to keep salaries down, most companies perform official reviews of their employees. These reviews may come each quarter, twice a year, or annually, but no matter where you work there's a good chance you will be reviewed. So how does this affect employee morale? Let's take a look.
Most people's raises are tied directly to their review. The better your review, the better your chance of getting a raise. If you get a poor review, you have a pretty good chance of spending your time at work searching for a new job on the internet. So it comes as no surprise that review time can be quite stressful for many people. For some people, a review can make or break their career - one bad review at the wrong time and you could wind up stuck in the same job (at the same pay) for the foreseeable future. However, a good review at the right time could propel you into a whole new world of possibilities, with doors opening before you that you wouldn't have imagined possible just a short while ago. Or at the very least, you could get a 3% raise.
So with so much riding on these reviews, it's no wonder that people spend a lot of time worrying about them. What will your boss say about you? About the quality of work you do? Will your boss say you are a "hard worker" or are there "opportunities for improvement?" Are you a "model employee whose characteristics are such that all other employees should strive to be like you" or are you "a devious, lazy sloth who has, on no fewer than three occasions, been caught stealing office supplies?" By the way, that last one will probably get you no more than a 1% raise, so try to not be that one.
Sometimes, in order to crank up the tension, companies will include peer evaluations as part of the review process. That's right, your co-workers opinions will have a direct impact on how much of a raise (if any) you get. On the surface, this may not sound all that bad, especially if you are friends with the people you work with. But dig a little deeper, and you'll see why this could be a disaster.
First of all, this would only be a benefit to you if you get to pick the people who do the review. If you get to pick your close friends, and reach a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" agreement, this is not a problem. However, if your manager gets to pick the reviewers, there's a decent chance that your manager will pick people who are not your friend and will be more objective. Worse case scenario, your manager (maybe knowingly, maybe not) picks someone that doesn't like you, or has an axe to grind with you. Suddenly, you're forced to either kiss up to this person, or accept the fact that your review will be filled with comments like "Needs to improve: personal hygiene." Your only hope is that you are selected to review this person as well, resulting in a stalemate. Remember "MAD" from the Cold War? Mutually Assured Destruction. It's what kept the USA and USSR from launching nukes at each other. The same principle will keep you and your co-worker from lobbing bombs at each other in your reviews.
Some companies take the torture one step further. As part of the evaluation process, you have to evaluate yourself. While this may seem like a slam dunk in your favor, it isn't necessarily the blessing it appears to be.
While you do have the opportunity to lavish ridiculous amounts of undeserved praise upon yourself, keep in mind that this portion of review will be taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt. As foolish as we like to think management is, management is smart enough to know that you're going to pat yourself on the back a little more than anyone else would. While saying that you "saved the company $1.4 million dollars while simultaneously streamlining the work process of your entire division" may sound good, there's a decent chance that your manager will at least question you about it. On the bright side, no manager expects you to be completely honest, so you can get away with one or two white lies, like "consistently shows up on time" and "is willing to help others with their work whenever possible."
The biggest downside to the self-evaluation is the part that asks you to describe "opportunities for improvement" - in other words, what don't you do well enough that will justify your small raise. Not only are they picking on your weak points (in the unlikely event you have any), but they're making you do it for them. Then they can come back and say that "we would've liked to have given you a bigger raise, but as you pointed out, you need to improve on..." and at that point, whatever words come next don't really matter. The key to try to avoid this pitfall is to pick things that are easy to improve on, or things that aren't important, or things you already do well (so that when your next review comes along, you can brag about how much you "improved" in this area). Examples of these might be taking better notes during meetings, working better with others, and no longer selling trade secrets to your competitors.
If you're lucky, you only have to go through this process once a year, and hopefully you're now a little better prepared to tackle your next review. Got any review advice of your own? Any review horror stories? Post a comment and share them with us.
Most people's raises are tied directly to their review. The better your review, the better your chance of getting a raise. If you get a poor review, you have a pretty good chance of spending your time at work searching for a new job on the internet. So it comes as no surprise that review time can be quite stressful for many people. For some people, a review can make or break their career - one bad review at the wrong time and you could wind up stuck in the same job (at the same pay) for the foreseeable future. However, a good review at the right time could propel you into a whole new world of possibilities, with doors opening before you that you wouldn't have imagined possible just a short while ago. Or at the very least, you could get a 3% raise.
So with so much riding on these reviews, it's no wonder that people spend a lot of time worrying about them. What will your boss say about you? About the quality of work you do? Will your boss say you are a "hard worker" or are there "opportunities for improvement?" Are you a "model employee whose characteristics are such that all other employees should strive to be like you" or are you "a devious, lazy sloth who has, on no fewer than three occasions, been caught stealing office supplies?" By the way, that last one will probably get you no more than a 1% raise, so try to not be that one.
Sometimes, in order to crank up the tension, companies will include peer evaluations as part of the review process. That's right, your co-workers opinions will have a direct impact on how much of a raise (if any) you get. On the surface, this may not sound all that bad, especially if you are friends with the people you work with. But dig a little deeper, and you'll see why this could be a disaster.
First of all, this would only be a benefit to you if you get to pick the people who do the review. If you get to pick your close friends, and reach a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" agreement, this is not a problem. However, if your manager gets to pick the reviewers, there's a decent chance that your manager will pick people who are not your friend and will be more objective. Worse case scenario, your manager (maybe knowingly, maybe not) picks someone that doesn't like you, or has an axe to grind with you. Suddenly, you're forced to either kiss up to this person, or accept the fact that your review will be filled with comments like "Needs to improve: personal hygiene." Your only hope is that you are selected to review this person as well, resulting in a stalemate. Remember "MAD" from the Cold War? Mutually Assured Destruction. It's what kept the USA and USSR from launching nukes at each other. The same principle will keep you and your co-worker from lobbing bombs at each other in your reviews.
Some companies take the torture one step further. As part of the evaluation process, you have to evaluate yourself. While this may seem like a slam dunk in your favor, it isn't necessarily the blessing it appears to be.
While you do have the opportunity to lavish ridiculous amounts of undeserved praise upon yourself, keep in mind that this portion of review will be taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt. As foolish as we like to think management is, management is smart enough to know that you're going to pat yourself on the back a little more than anyone else would. While saying that you "saved the company $1.4 million dollars while simultaneously streamlining the work process of your entire division" may sound good, there's a decent chance that your manager will at least question you about it. On the bright side, no manager expects you to be completely honest, so you can get away with one or two white lies, like "consistently shows up on time" and "is willing to help others with their work whenever possible."
The biggest downside to the self-evaluation is the part that asks you to describe "opportunities for improvement" - in other words, what don't you do well enough that will justify your small raise. Not only are they picking on your weak points (in the unlikely event you have any), but they're making you do it for them. Then they can come back and say that "we would've liked to have given you a bigger raise, but as you pointed out, you need to improve on..." and at that point, whatever words come next don't really matter. The key to try to avoid this pitfall is to pick things that are easy to improve on, or things that aren't important, or things you already do well (so that when your next review comes along, you can brag about how much you "improved" in this area). Examples of these might be taking better notes during meetings, working better with others, and no longer selling trade secrets to your competitors.
If you're lucky, you only have to go through this process once a year, and hopefully you're now a little better prepared to tackle your next review. Got any review advice of your own? Any review horror stories? Post a comment and share them with us.
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