What happens when complacency replaces commitment in the workplace? More and more managers are faced with an army of workers who have lost their sense of loyalty, enthusiasm, and motivation. While resignation is the logical next step, these employees haven’t technically quit their jobs, but are simply going through the motions, leaving managers with workers who do the minimum required but continue to collect salary and benefits. In the small and medium-sized business realm, this leakage can mean lower profits, compromised productivity, poor customer service, and contamination of an entire workforce. These workers have come to be known as “disengaged workers” by HR professionals.
Disengaged workers can mean life or death for a small business that relies on its employees to build the goodwill among customers that is vital to survival in a competitive environment. Managers who find themselves in this wasteland of watchers and malcontents often need only look to themselves for causes and solutions.
Workers are often disengaged due to management practices that create confusion and disharmony instead of empowerment and trust. Communication between workers in a small business is often characterized by rumors and casual gossip, and managers who lose their professional outlook and feed the water cooler mill are often their own worst enemies.
Managers who engage in workplace gossip, betray confidences, and violate employee confidentiality create an environment conducive to employee disappointment. When managers sacrifice professional neutrality for a sense of camaraderie, employees find themselves thrown into a “no man’s land” where roles are confused, lines of authority unclear, and a general lack of respect for established protocols becomes common. In these times when managers take pleasure in criticizing employees’ conduct, personal life, performance, appearance, and other casual comments to workers, the recipients of these comments are well on their way to becoming selfless workers.
It’s hard to believe that managers would engage in such dangerous and damaging practices, but the small business environment is often a hotbed for such behavior. Workers spend 8 or more hours a day together in a physically subdued space that provides few opportunities for privacy, and managers mistakenly take the approach that familiarity will bring them closer to their staff. Familiarity, as the saying goes, often breeds contempt.
Workers who hear their conduct criticized, their choices questioned, the butt of jokes from the vicarious source of workplace gossip often give up any emotional commitment to their jobs and employers. Financial reasons keep them ticking the clock, but their hearts and minds are far from where they spend their working hours. Such workers become depressed and angry at the betrayal of the very person to whom they owe their respect. Disengaged workers feel powerless to redress their grievances because who do they complain to and these sensitive issues will simply become more fodder for the rumor mill. The end result is a group of employees fighting each other with no established means to vent and resolve their bruised egos and hurt feelings.
Managers who avoid such casual familiarity and maintain the professional distance their position requires can avoid sowing the seeds of a disinterested workforce. Working relationships in a small business are fragile and tenuous at best. Managers can foster strong relationships simply by being the boss. In large companies where personnel policies and protocols are written and enforced, managers can more easily avoid these pitfalls. In the world of small businesses, managers must rely on themselves and their own sense of perspective to give their employees someone to look up to, someone to trust, and someone to keep the “buzz of the water cooler” in check. . The end result is a worker who isn’t distracted by personal concerns and can spend their time and attention exactly where you want them to—the customers who are the lifeblood of your small business.