TS Darbari Blog: Why Micromanaging Your Employees Will Destroy Your Company?
TS Darbari says that most of the Indian firms follow micromanagement culture which stands out as a pathetic misfit, relics of a managerial style, of a negative approach that should have died out long ago: a culture of surveillance that has also, in many ways, been perpetuated by misguided approaches to education. TS Darbari further adds that “micromanagement” has a negative connotation. It is not only frustrating but also demotivating. As if dealing with a tough job wasn’t enough, you now have to deal with a nagging micromanager.
TS Darbari says that cases of bad management pop up in the news all the time. Most of the Indian companies in order to enhance productivity make the company a hell for its employees — resulting in high turnover, not to mention bad press. High attrition costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if someone leaves.
According to TS Darbari, there is a huge difference between being a boss and a leader. Leaders take care of people who work for them, respect their colleagues and employees and Employees expect their employers to support them in balancing work and personal commitments. While with the bosses, employees often feel a disconnect. They feel obligated to put work ahead of everything else — even their own health. This leads to burnout, poor performance, loss of trust in the company, and ultimately, they’ll be looking to move to a different company.
It is essential for companies to retain their employees
This requires giving employees autonomy and flexibility over where, when, and how they work, valuing work-life balance, knowing how to coach employees to solve problems, and creating an environment of psychological safety.
Stop micromanaging. Here’s what to do instead.
Micromanagement goes beyond day-to-day tasks.
It shows up in how, when, and where you let people work, in your ideas of time, how you show (or don’t show) trust in your employees, the language you use, how you approach goal setting, how you think about motivation, and the feeling of psychological safety you create.
TS Darbari says that the suggestions I make won’t be possible for every job or company to accommodate. The point isn’t to dictate how all work should look, but to demonstrate that there may be different ways to work that are better for your employees and business — and to encourage you to figure out what a version of this might look like at your workplace.
If there’s one thing we should learn from the pandemic, when many of us have been obliged to adopt unfamiliar technologies, it’s that industrial relations should be based on trust, and control should be limited to reasonable and agreed limits, whether quantitative or qualitative, but never as pathetic and absurd as the amount of time a person spends sitting at work or in front of a screen. These are approaches inherited from an industrial past, moved to environments where they are increasingly anachronistic: first the office, then the internet. And as the digital transition progresses, the practice becomes less and less meaningful.
If your company’s culture is based on micromanagement, think about how to manage the transition away from it. Micromanagement results in the opposite of what it’s supposed to: misleading metrics, surveillance, cheating and low morale. If you think the transition to a virtual environment means using technology to exercise even greater control over your workers than when they’re all sitting in the office, you should be worried: it’s a symptom that you don’t understand work and professional relationships as they should work in the XXI century. You’re merely demonstrating that your inability to adapt.
