14 Mistakes That Can Destroy Employee Engagement In Your Organization

by Srikant Chellappa Nov 20,2015
Engagedly
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The People Strategy Leaders Podcast

with Srikant Chellappa, CEO

What is the responsibility of an ideal manager? To increase productivity in their organization by building trust and fostering a healthy relationship with their employees.

But many managers still seem to have no idea, how important it is to keep their employees happy and engaged. So we, at Engagedly have collated a list of possible mistakes a manager makes that can kill employee engagement.

Here’s the list. look, learn, and act!

1. Having no vision

The three things you can’t do without in an organization are vision, mission, and values statements. When your organization or team doesn’t have a vision, everyone in your team has to wait around to know what they should do next. If you want your employees to take the tasks assigned to them seriously, then don’t wait.

Create a business vision and share it with your employees. You can involve your employees when you create a vision for the organization. This makes them feel empowered and also increases employee engagement.

Also Read: 7 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important

2. Playing the blame game

When there is a problematic situation in an organization, it is the responsibility of the manager to resolve the problem. However, it is often seen that managers start blaming their employees instead of saving the situation.

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” Arnold H. Glasow.

Remember that you all are on the same team. When a teammate does a mistake, the manager should take responsibility for the mistake instead of solely blaming the teammate for their mistake.

3. Setting unrealistic goals and deadlines

Goals shouldn’t be very easy to attain because they won’t let the true potential show. But also remember not to make them so unrealistic that they intimidate your employees.

Before setting goals and deadlines, think about how these goals affect your organization and work culture. If not, these goals instead of motivating your employees and promoting employee engagement, kills employee morale.

Also Read: How To Write Good Employee Goals And Objectives?

4. Humiliating employees

Employees sometimes make mistakes, but it doesn’t mean that you humiliate them before your staff. Keep in mind that they don’t need to be taught a lesson all they need is a little guidance and motivation.

Embarrassing them publicly doesn’t increase your organizational productivity, does it?

5. No recognition for good work

Imagine that you were given a really challenging task and you took a lot of effort and risk to complete it on time. After you complete the work, your boss takes all the credit and doesn’t even bother to give you a little appreciation. Would you give your maximum efforts again on any other task? Now you know how that feels, don’t you?

Appreciate and recognize your employees when they meet your expectations. A simple act of appreciation goes a long way.

Also Read: Is Employee Recognition Only About Perks?

6. Playing favourites

As a human, you might enjoy working with a few people and it is completely normal. But, when you are a manager, you’ve got different responsibilities and different people working as a team under you.

You can’t respond differently to different people for the same behavior because of your personal preferences. If you do, it creates a really unfair workplace environment.

7. Not valuing work-life balance

Understand that employees are not commodities and learn to value their personal time. Employees can be grateful to you for their jobs, but they also have a life outside the office. So value their presence and don’t boss over them 24X7 asking them to complete their office work.

8. Ineffective performance reviews

It is often seen that performance reviews are based on what the manager remembers about his subordinates. They do not use a scale to measure employee performance. This causes the staff to lose its morale.

There are many tools out there that can manage performance reviews effectively (Engagedly, being one of them). Choose one of them and get started.

9. Not communicating with the staff

When you are a manager, you can’t just be an emotionless, command-giving robot in the office. Communicate with your employees and understand their problems. Talk to them about their work, your work, or anything.

When you don’t communicate your ideas with your employees, they can never reach your expectations. If you want to see your organizational goals met, then get started.

10. Inappropriate joking

You might want to show your employees that you encourage fun and that you are a ‘cool’ boss, but when you are cracking jokes, limit yourself and be sure not to hurt anyone.

This kind of behavior causes low employee morale and an unfair workplace environment resulting in decreased organizational productivity. So think before you say something.

11. Focusing only on mistakes

As mentioned above, employees make mistakes, but they also complete their given tasks. You can’t only focus on the mistakes they make and ignore their accomplishments.

You don’t have to focus only on their mistakes and taunt them always. All you can do as a manager is, to talk about the mistake and help them correct it if possible.

12. Holding useless meetings

You should have heard the saying, ‘Time is money’ quite a few times now. Well, it actually is true. Employees already have so much on their plate. You don’t want to conduct meetings and discuss stuff pointlessly and waste their time.

Holding these kinds of meetings doesn’t benefit anyone. So, before calling for a meeting know why you want to hold it.

13. Not keeping your promises

Promising something to your employees and not keeping those promises, makes you lose your personal credibility. When you promise something to your employees they take it as a done deal.

Be sure that you can keep a promise before making it. By saying this, we do not mean that you lie to your employees; it is just that, you should be sure of your ability to keep the promise you make. If you constantly fail to keep your promises, your staff may completely lose respect for you.

Also Read: Tips To Manage Stress Of Your Remote Team

14. Threatening your employees’ jobs

When you hire someone, you cannot expect them to be perfectionists at work. When they fail to meet your expectations, embarrassing publicly is not an option and neither is threatening their jobs. Threatening your employees’ jobs is a sign of an extremely unhealthy work culture.

You can’t periodically remind your employees that they can be fired and simply smile away saying, “I was kidding…” If you want to do something about your employees’ low performance, talk to them and help them improve themselves.


Want to improve employee engagement at your organization? Then Engagedly is just the thing for you!

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Author
Srikant Chellappa
CEO & Co-Founder of Engagedly

Srikant Chellappa is the Co-Founder and CEO at Engagedly and is a passionate entrepreneur and people leader. He is an author, producer/director of 6 feature films, a music album with his band Manchester Underground, and is the host of The People Strategy Leaders Podcast. He is currently working on his next book, Ikigai at the Workplace, which is slated for release in the fall of 2024.

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