Trust Good Employees, Fire Bad Employees…Simple.
Michelle Golden, over at Golden Practices, wrote an entry a few days ago about talent shortages being a firm’s fault and wrote the following
…I want to scream aloud when I see firms focusing intently on micromanaging stupid things like cell phone policies, dress codes and, yes, grooming policies! Good God! If we are having to tell people to bathe and comb their hair, we aren’t hiring great people.
These sorts of policies underscore the firms’ lack of trust of their knowledge workers. The very existence of these policies in firms draw attention to the lack of alignment between who they are and what they want.
And if we are hiring great people and telling everybody, across the board, exactly how to dress or groom because one person can’t get it right, then we don’t deserve all those other great people. Frankly, if one person struggles to be appropriate in personal appearance, and we write a “Policy” because we’re too chicken to coach them individually, then we get what we deserve when we demoralize everyone who is not the problem.
If we refuse to equip people with cell phones so that we and our clients can reach them (accessibility is still a good thing, right?) then what does that say about the firm’s commitment to service? Seriously, how much does a cell-phone cost? What is the cost of inaccessibility?
Where is the firm walking its talk?
Morale in firms is bottom of the barrel low. Adding health club or vision benefits isn’t going to solve the problem. Adding petty policies to micromanage knowledge workers is another slap in the face.
As someone who just came from a company that monitored all email and web activity to the point that they could have a conversation with you about everything that was discussed in your email, I can attest to how big an annoyance an unfounded lack of trust can be.
My current job has completely blocked all chat services, and in the process has also blocked gmail (because it has an embedded chat service). Although I understand the desire to stop unproductive chat, it seems silly to me to take away a valuable tool for most because a few bad apples abuse the privilege. I say fire the abusers and let the rest of us use the tools available to us to be as productive and happy as possible while working 50+ hour work weeks.
Read more about this subject here, here, and here.
on May 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I’ve taught my MBAs countless times over the years that when you design controls to eliminate those who are untrustworthy, you often encourage more untrustworthy behavior, drive out the trustworthy people, and destroy morale. I totally agree: get rid of the bad apples, who everyone knows who they are, and reward the good ones to take reasonable risks. Our new book has great examples of how ordinary people became extraordinary leaders, not only by being trustworthy, but by trusting their employees and customers “to do the right thing.”
Aneil Mishra
Book available at: http://www.lulu.com/content/2196924