Articles
What Makes Employees Mad - Part II | What Makes Employees Mad - Part III
Workplace Wrath: Using Anger to Build | All Praise to the Supervisor | Listen First
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions | The Emperor’s New Clothes - Providing Negative Feedback
Practicing Safe Stress

What Makes Employees Mad - Part I?

Picture a trapeze artist walking on the high wire over the great Niagara Falls. Being a supervisor is a similar experience for they are required to balance the expectations of management and the realities of the workforce. Walking this tightrope is a hard enough job without having angry employees to manage. Knowing what contributes to an employee’s frustration is a key ingredient in a successful supervisor.

Obviously, there are many reasons for an employee to be angry. These frustrations sometimes are related to the job site or they may come from their personal lives. As Peter Connelly with Connelly Press and Copy said, “I do not have a hook outside my business where my employees hang their emotional lives when they come to work; they bring them with them!” Yes, employees can bring their problems from home to work. Yet as troubling as this problem is, it is not the main cause of discontent.

In the 70s and early 80’s there were many strikes and I believed what was written on the picket signs that the dispute was about money and/or working conditions. This concept was reinforced in the numerous labor negations I’ve participated in; what did we negotiate about … money and working conditions! The members on both sides of the table would have also agreed that the picket signs represented the issues on the table.

When I interview employees, what I hear most is that their employers do not respect them. Oh, they seldom say it that way; instead, you might hear “management doesn’t listen to us’, “they tell us …I don’t pay you to think,” “If you don’t like it here, go to work flipping hamburgers,” and “management only does something if it’s their idea”. What I hear in these statements is a lack of respect.

As I look back on those times, labor and management were not working together. It was the classis case of “Us and Them”. There was little trust on either side. Respect was only achieved because of the power one side may have at the time and their willingness to inflict it upon the other.

Okay, supposing the conclusion I obtained in the numerous hours spent interviewing your employees is correct, and that labor doesn’t believe they are respected, how can this be changed? Your employees tell me that respect comes from a feeling that they are part of the team, not just wearing the company hard hat or uniform but really part of the team.

The first thing that will make a profound difference is to listen to hourly employees. They have perceptions of how their job should be done that are many times more insightful that what an engineering degree dictates. They have a practical hands-on method that can only come from actually doing the job. By asking questions about how their job could be done better, then actually listening to then, and using some of these suggestions will have many benefits. The company will benefit from their suggestions by increased productivity and the employee will begin to feel they are really making a difference – the beginning of mutual respect.

I had an employee tell me “When I get to the gate, I leave my mind in the pickup truck!” This is exactly what this economy doesn’t need, employees who only produce from the neck down. We are in a global economy and competing with country’s whose labor cost is far below the USA’s. The only way we are going to survive is to engage everyone completely: their muscle, their brain, and their spirit. When labor believes it has an equal place, respect will begin.