Why are Employees Demotivated & Disengaged? Part 2
In the last article, we spoke about how big companies have Technology, manpower, budget, and people with a great experiences. So why is the performance going down, and their employees are disengaged?
And we said that we have one main reason and 9 sub-reasons that follows. These 9 sub-reasons are the consequences of the main reason.
And the main reason that we spoke about last time is choosing the wrong unqualified leaders to fill managerial positions, and we also spoke about what to do to resolve this issue.
And today we will speak about 5 of the other 9 sub-reasons or, in other words, what happens after choosing the wrong person for a managerial role.
After companies pick the wrong people to fill leadership positions, 9 things happen next that makes the employees feel demotivated and push their performance down.
1-Framing wrong behaviors.
When the company employees see that the wrong person with the wrong attitude has been promoted, they get a silent indication that if they want to grow inside the company, they must follow this wrong behavior also. But this is only one side of the equation.
Because the other side of the equation is related to this new Manager’s choices.
Because guess who will he choose from his team members to reward or promote? The people who are like him in characteristics and behavior.
To make it easier for you to visualize what I am speaking about here, imagine that the leader has a hard personality and a short temper, and he gets aggressive easily.
Do you think that he will choose and reward people from his team who are calm and trying to solve their problems by communicating calmly with others?
I do not think so.
So, the first sub-reason is framing the wrong behaviors and making them more in-demand.
2-Restraints from the industrial age, or in other words: Time vs outcome.
In the industrial age, when hand tools were replaced by power-driven machines, if you work longer, then most probably this means more production.
But the problem is, we are not living in this industrial age anymore and our work and productivity now are not only depending on machines.
When the wrong person is promoted to a leadership role, he or she does not focus on productivity, results, and the well-being of his employees. Instead, he focuses mainly on the time they spend at their desks or appearing in front of him.
That’s why it is not surprising to find people in corporations, no matter where they are in the hierarchy, sitting and working until 7, 8, or even 9 pm. And no matter how long they work, they are not even able to think about leaving early one day. And if they do, they feel guilty and as if they are doing something wrong or stealing.
Research confirmed that it is impossible for a human being to perform optimally if his life is not balanced in 4 specific areas: nutrition, Physical activity, sleeping, and relationships with his or her beloved ones.
And spending long hours at work consistently results in sacrifices in these 4 areas.
3- Lack of autonomy.
Daniel Pink wrote in his wonderful book ‘’Drive’’, that one of the factors that massively impacts motivation is autonomy.
And autonomy means self-government or in other words the ability to do the things that you want, at the time that you choose, with the people that you want to work with.
Wrong leaders love controlling others, and this results in a lack of autonomy and drives motivation downwards.
4- Lack of a clear path.
OK, this one is a common responsibility between the employee and the manager.
Most employees think that there is a career path defined for them in the company that they work for.
They keep waiting and waiting thinking that their boss knows exactly their future and what their next steps inside this company should be. Which is rarely the case.
Most companies and I did not say all, have no career path defined for their employees. Even though they should.
Each employee has the right to gain clarity and to understand clearly what his future may look like in 5 years if he maintained a specific performance or prerequisites inside the company.
For example, I know some big companies already, where the employee gets hired after graduation in something like a rotation program.
And I do not mean job rotation, but I mean country rotation where the employee travels to another company location every 1-2 years and performs the same job there with the plan that he or she reaches a managerial position after 5 years maximum.
On the other hand, I urge each employee to think and create his own personal career plan as well as a development plan. And each year you have as an employee to test the progress of these plans against reality.
And if you are not moving forward, then you must address this topic immediately and discuss it with your employer, and if you did not reach a clear outcome then I recommend that you leave.
5- Lack of automatic recognition.
Most employees have a false belief that if we do what we must do and keep silent, we will get appreciated.
When I am coaching people, I usually hear some sentences that can be interpreted as ''my boss will come suddenly, give me a pat on my back and tell me you earned a salary increase without me even asking for it''. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most companies.
The reality is, if you do not highlight your achievements and market yourself, you will not get rewarded. If you do not ask for a salary increase, then you will rarely get it.
This is a wrong leadership attitude of course and a gap between what people want and expect, and what really happens.
This gap makes a lot of employees feel a lack of appreciation and leave, or their motivation and engagement levels drop and their performance drops in silence, especially the employees who are not assertive enough to ask for what they deserve.
In the next article, we will speak about the last 4 sub-reasons or consequences.
Until then, I want you to share with me your opinions in the comments section below and tell me if you agree or disagree with the 5 consequences that I mentioned so far.
