Running a business can be tough and result in a lot of frustration from staff, management, and customers. Sometimes that frustration can boil over and cause consternation among the core elements that need to function for a business to be successful. This week, let’s look at an issue that can really hurt your business.

Management Devaluing Employees

One of the most destabilizing things that can happen to a business is when people who function as leaders lash out at their subordinates. This can cause serious problems for the overall viability of the business. There are many reasons that management can get frustrated: lack of productivity, holes in communications, etc. Whatever it is, however, there is a certain way to do things that will not alienate your entire workforce when dealing with problems you encounter. 

There are a few things that you can do to help avoid this tragic scenario. You can hire the right people for the job. A lot of the time, the people who frustrate management the most in any endeavor are the people who either think they already know what to do and waste time and resources doing it inefficiently or who claim to work well with a team only to alienate and mismanage people.

As a manager, it can be frustrating when people don’t do their jobs up to expectations. Still, it’s a whole other issue when those people both interrupt the potential efficiency with personality deficits and blame everyone else for the group’s inefficiency. That’s why it is important to do regular (annual should be fine) employee reviews that not only help management understand how an employee fits in their current role, but also to give the employee a ground floor for productivity.

The next thing that you can do is understand that the people that work inside your organization not only depend on it to feed their families and have a place to live, they also are people and can get careless and tired and bored if the situation presents itself. The best thing you can do in this scenario is to be consistent. Maintaining consistency when dealing with your staff (unless that consistency is malicious) is important because, ultimately, your employees are the ones that do all the things that make your business successful or a complete failure, and if they need to guess about how they will be received (in success or failure), they won’t care as much about the job they do.

Additionally, we all know that the customer is always right…but they aren’t. Companies that are competing for customers’ business, need to make people feel valued over anything else. Times have changed a bit and that feeling shouldn’t come at a worker’s expense. Now that most everything is service-oriented, level heads need to prevail. When a manager just berates their subordinates, especially when they do it in front of others, it can really make a person dislike their job.

Managers have to remember that we’re all customers to some degree, and many people will do what they need to devalue products and services to get a discount or something complimentary. Not every situation with an unhappy customer is the result of employee mistakes or incompetence.

Having said all that, there are times when employees need to be reprimanded, but it should be handled professionally. No one likes getting screamed at, so any manager that wears his/her feelings on their sleeve, should take some time to cool down and make a list of line-items to hit on rather than just losing control and making the whole situation worse.  

Running a business is chock-full of challenges, but there is nothing that will test your mettle more than managing other people. If you would like to see more content about business and technology, return to our blog soon.