Ulrich said:
AgLA06 said:
Ulrich said:
I'm at a small company where people are mostly trusted to get their work done without a ton of micromanagement. When we went to WFH, several employees pretty much stopped working completely. Even though they weren't being closely managed in the office, being in a work environment was very helpful for them to be self-disciplined. That's part of why we went back to the office.
I've never understood the mindset of wanting to keep people who aren't productive unless someone else has to be unproductive to ensure they are productive. Just seems like horrible leadership.
Find good people and stop trying to manage the company based on the worst employee.
Your tone says that you're disagreeing with me and calling my company out, but I'm not sure it's a good take.
We had people who were productive in some circumstances and not others. We put them in a position to be productive without micromanagement, so everybody won. Nobody got fired, we got our productive people back, and we didn't have to hire middle managers we couldn't afford or roll the dice hoping the next hire was able to work from home.
I don't see how that is terrible leadership. If anything, discarding everyone who doesn't work the same way you want to work sounds like a pretty tough stance to take.
You're literally saying that in order for them to be productive, you had to have other people spend time being unproductive (managing them) to ensure it and spend more money on office space and resources than just hiring competent staff. Think that through. It's beyond inefficient. Some of your good people who do their job regardless are going to see it as being punished because you guys can't staff appropriately. So in essence your company is being defined by your worst performers.
Good, productive people are worth their weight in gold. Unproductive or morale killing individuals are detrimental multiples of their weight. To enact policies that the rest of the office may not like to micro manage dead weight is the quickest way to kill morale. I'm facing this right now.
I work with someone who is closer to collecting an allowance than earning a salary. Their responsibilities have been managed (reduced) to almost zero, they are rarely productive, and everyone else (my team specifically) has had to pick up the slack. No one else can stand them, everyone else is resentful, and ultimately just as much would be accomplished, with more money to go around if they were let go. And yet the owner still thinks there's hope and he can manage them (he can't).
It's another form of the scenario you just described.
