The most important part of company culture is trust. After all, you primarily work with strangers, and you must have trust to get the work done. However, there is one thing that can ruin the trust part completely. Any guesses, anyone?
The answer is micromanagement. People start to lose trust when you micromanage, and it may lead to some disastrous unwanted implications affecting your business. To put it differently, micromanagement in the workplace kills corporate culture. Even Steve Jobs said, "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
Micromanagement and Micromanagers
Micromanagement is a management style popularized in modern times. It refers to managing work at the office, where a manager constantly observes and controls the position of employees working under them.
In micromanagement, every tiny detail is anatomized by the manager to see if the work is getting done right. The manager becomes a micromanager, and they come across as obsessed individuals incapable of delegating a task. Micromanagers essentially want to have authority over everything and, therefore, have the constant urge to do everything themselves. Such individuals handles public relations poorly and face extreme difficulty in gaining the trust of their employees.
The company inadvertently loses their employees' trust when they are micromanaging off-limits. Besides, there are several other negative effects of micromanagement that any company must avoid. So, let's learn more about those negative effects in order to help avoid excessive micromanagement in the workplace as it can degrade manager effectiveness.
Effects of Micromanagement
Remember one thing before we start looking into some critical negative effects of micromanagement. The more you micromanage, the more the productivity and quality of your product and service will fall into the abyss. More importantly, it would be best if you emphasize micromanaging the process over the people or ask yourself whether you are ready to be a manager.. Now, let's take a one-by-one look at what happens when practicing excessive micromanagement in the workplace.
Decreases Productivity
Constant monitoring, coupled with excessive adjustments and commands, reduces productivity. Employees need to slow down their work to process and implement continuous input and workflow changes. It can also cause them to assume their ability to complete tasks independently. As a result, the staff becomes more dependent on their manager for guidance in carrying out their work.
Micromanagers essentially retain all the authority when employees take responsibility for their jobs. They also risk losing the benefits of their employees' unique knowledge, skills, and talents because they have conditioned them to follow orders rather than come up with unique ideas and solutions. Since micromanagers spend too much on their employees, they let down the opportunities to help their organizations more.
Destroys Company Culture and Kills Employee Trust
Lack of trust destroys company culture, and micromanagement kills confidence. Employees at a workplace must receive the support and trust of their managers to become more responsible towards the company. It is the most effective way to groom employees for a long-term association with the company. When micro-managers stifle an employee's decision-making process, it makes the employee feel like the manager doesn't trust them or has enough belief in their abilities required to complete the task at hand.
Micromanagers can make employees feel helpless by preventing them from using resources, knowledge, and initiative to get the job done. Furthermore, employees become resentful and disloyal when they get micromanaged a lot. It may also result in employees joining another company to feel more valued and trusted.
Reduces Innovation
Employee engagement remains key to innovation. Furthermore, employee empowerment ensures an increase in engagement rates. Micromanagement takes empowerment with the manager's constant interruptions with advice and orders. It prevents employees from thinking and trying innovative methods to solve problems.
Over time, it results in employees not caring enough for the company's welfare. So, they become less responsible and less involved, which one can visibly notice in the results. More importantly, micromanagement leads to underutilization of the employees' skills, knowledge, and talent.
In other words, micromanagers leave no room for employees to apply their skills and improve the quality of work. Here micromanagers essentially take employees for granted and treat them like machines. Due to this, innovation takes the backseat, and it's the company that suffers the most.
Increases Employee Turnover
Chronic micromanagement is one of the top reasons people quit their jobs, and it is primarily because it destroys the manager and employee relationship. No one will appreciate persistent monitoring and repetitive scrutiny over one's job. Furthermore, such practices drain talented employees' patience, and eventually, they start looking for a job elsewhere.
Chronic management also leads to diminishing productivity, due to which more companies hire more employees to meet their goals. Besides, the time, effort, and resources required to hire and train replacements also negatively impact business results.
Takeaway
So now you must know how micromanagement in the workplace affects the employee and the company. The effect of constant micromanagement can further lead to a drastic outcome for the company. Hence, it would be best if you avoided micromanagement at any cost and gain more awareness about ways to manage up at the office.
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