North American Workers Harbor Dirty Little Secrets .. !!!
You might ask how I know this but the research shows that it’s exactly the same in your workplace as in the rest of the workplaces throughout the nation. The rumors spread….”the boss is having an affair with the secretary and that’s why she got promoted,” “John plays soccer with Dave and he gets all the good jobs that Dave has going,” “the supervisor knew Debbie in school so she’ll never reprimand her,” and so the story goes on.And what do you think all of this does to the company and the people working within it? Does it help them to get up out of bed in the morning and shout “Fantastic, I’m going into work today”. Well of course the answer to that is an emphatic “No”. In actual fact disgruntled and unhappy employees cost companies throughout the nation billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs each year.
Let me tell you about a friend of mine. We will call him ‘Tom’ and his story goes as follows; ‘Tom’ was a real go-getter, high flying type of person, nothing could stop him from achieving his goals. He was promoted within 1 year to manage the second biggest office in the country and met all the goals and targets set for him. He then made a personal decision to move to manage a much smaller office that was struggling, but he still retained his original salary. Along came the regional vice president and he started to make changes in the company. Good people started leaving but nobody in the executive board took notice. Eventually the regional vice president decided that Tom was too much of a threat to him so he set about making the conditions right to let Tom go.
However Tom was no slouch and he realized what was happening. He took 8 weeks sick time at full pay (Tom had a six figure income) before eventually returning to work to negotiate his severance. All in all it took around $75,000 to cover the sick leave and his severance.
What I still find hard to believe is that this vice president kept his job. What is even harder to understand is that he worked hard to fire one of his brightest, award winning stars and rack up a direct loss to the company of $75,000. When you add in the cost of employing and training a replacement and also the ‘opportunity lost’ amount then that figure could go as high $150,000. Then add in the cost of all the other employees that left or were fired when the new VP arrived and the cost to the company was enormous. Well done to that vice president!! And well done to the executive board that didn’t even notice what was happening. They just stuck their heads in the sand and kept on going.
And the terrible thing is that this is not an isolated incident. I could think of several people I know that left a company due to problems with their supervisor or work colleagues.
Indeed research indicates that the typical manager loses approximately 25% of his/her working day to unwarranted conflict and that 75% of employees report leaving a job due to workplace conflict with colleagues. This is time and money lost day after day after day. Not to mention the lost productivity from the workforce when they are concentrating on their problems rather than on the task at hand. You know how it is…you’ve seen it time after time…and that adds up to a lot off the bottom line, doesn’t it?
So what causes this conflict and how can we reduce it? Well it’s actually quite easy to explain where a lot of this conflict comes from. Quite simply put conflict happens when we are involved in a relationship of some sort and we begin to feel that our needs are not being met. This leads to feelings of lowered self worth which leads to us starting to try and redress the balance against the person who caused the feelings in the first place. Quite often this involves talking behind backs, spreading rumors and gossip, and getting our allies into our corner so that the workplace becomes divided.
Conversely to this if we take away the bad feeling that our needs are not being met and we once again begin to feel worthwhile and are much more likely to be a positive contributor in the work environment rather than helping to create a caustic environment.
One of the best ways to do this is to make each employee feel that they are a valued contributor to the team and that their opinions matter. Make sure that they are given positive reinforcement often and that the lines of communication are always open. Corporate business training may well help but introducing a system that encourages feedback, such as our Even Better Place to Work system, will make sure that you know about employee problems before they become too big to deal with.
Our system encourages employees to take control of their work related relationship problems, be that with their boss or co-worker, and to make whispering behind backs a thing of the past. It enables your staff to feel happier about coming to work and greatly increases motivation while significantly reducing conflict across the board?
Some executives have called it “a spark of genius”, others “a Godsend for our company” while others still have vowed “never to be without it ever again”. It truly is going to be the “next big thing” in improving companies’ abilities to communicate on a human level. It is the culmination of 17 years work from one of the world’s leading organizational psychologists. Major companies are already using the system and now you can too. Contact us today to find what you can do to truly make your organization "an even better place to work".
Jeff Campbell
