Employee performance is critical to your organization’s success!
A week ago there was a fun (or painful) read on Bored Panda titled People Are Revealing The Absolute Worst Things Their Bosses Said To Them (36 Tweets). Go ahead and read through it… some of these will make you laugh, some might make you cringe.
I have two questions:
Why are bad bosses/executives/leaders allowed to stay in an company and ruin the culture?
How do bad bosses impact employee satisfaction and employee performance?
There’s a lot more that bad (or good) bosses could influence, including employee retention, the employer brand, etc.
Employee Performance vs. Today’s Statistics
In between the tweets the author of the article put a bunch of really interesting statistics, such as:
- 58% of management didn’t receive any management training. (source) This rings true for me. I have an MBA but I wouldn’t call that management training.
- 89% of bosses think employees quit because they want more money, according to Leigh Branham… but apparently only 12% actual leave because of more money! (source) This is a good example of a bad assumption that is totally off.
- 49% of full-time workers had a “great deal of trust” in a Harvard survey (source). What are managers doing so wrong that less than half of their team trusts them??
- The NUMBER ONE thing employees want, to elevate their job satisfaction, is recognition! NOTE: Snowfly is a Recognition system. The post says “global studies” show that recognition is more important and effective than “pay, promotion, autonomy, or training.” Is it that hard to say thank you, and be specific about what your employees are doing well?
- 82% of the time companies promote the WRONG PERSON, even though “one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name as manager.” (source)
- 30% of US employees are engaged at work. (source) But wait… it gets worse:
- 13% of employees worldwide are engaged. (source) Holy moly. We have serious problems. By the way, Snowfly is an employee engagement tool. And, managers have a lot to do with that…
- 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units (assumedly in the same companies) are due to different managers. Have an awesome manager? Lucky you, and high engagement. Have a bad manager? You might be on the way, way, way less engaged than the team sitting across the hallway.
These numbers are depressing. But, where there are such poor results there is opportunity. We can do better, and we must do better.
The main guy who started the twitter storm, Kevin McCaffrey, said:
“Management, in every job, is delusional.”
Are you delusional? Do you work with delusional managers that are causing low engagement at work?
We invite you to do better. Recognize your team for what they do. Give them credit for a job well done. This is not “who wants a trophy” mentality. Everyone appreciates knowing that they matter, and their contributions are seen.
Treat your team with dignity. They are humans, and they have lives outside of work. Acknowledge their humanity. You don’t need to be best friends, and you shouldn’t do this in a patronizing way. But when they feel you actually care about them everything changes. This dignity and respect is what people want.
You can use all of the Snowfly tools to recognize employees, even give incentives. You can promote the gamification we have in Snowfly that keeps the platform fun and engaging, and hope that you see behavioral change and increased employee performance. But if you don’t really care about them as individuals they’ll feel it.
Culture is not something you improve by throwing money at it. Culture comes from leaders who care. Leaders who earn confidence and trust are better leaders.
If you want to continue down the path of better leadership, reach out to us. We are nerds for leadership and culture. We have tools that can help your organization down that path. Reach out to us here:
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