Want to downsize by driving away your best employees? If you have trouble believing that I’ve seen these techniques while consulting or coaching, you’re underestimating human creativity.
To read the rest of this article from the Washington Business Courier, see: Surefire ways of inspiring exodus of best employees http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2004/05/17/smallb6.html
Ten techniques I’ve seen used to get rid of the best employees. See original article for details.
- Keep goals, strategic plans, deadlines, policies and procedures unclear or secret. Don’t develop clear communication skills and processes. Act as if employees are supposed to know what you mean, and if they don’t, it’s their problem. Ignore employees’ grievances or penalize them severely for wasting your time.
- Set impossible standards and deadlines; be hypercritical. Demand perfection. Break your own rules. Take your moods out on them; throw fits, retaliate often, make attacks personal - curse, threaten and demean them.
- Be the hub; change your mind often; give contradictory orders. Micro-manage and then be unavailable when your opinion is needed. Foster rumors. Criticize them loudly for not taking responsibility and for wasting your time with dumb questions.
- Evaluate sporadically, especially after mistakes, or not at all. Don’t give specific feedback; just yell that they did it wrong and there’s going to be hell to pay. Chastise in public. Avoid dealing with issues and problems. Promote inefficiency and diffuse responsibility.
- Deny responsibility; it’s never your fault. Promise anything, deny you ever said it (as if they just didn’t listen carefully or twisted your words), don’t put anything in writing
- Play favorites. Whisper behind closed doors, reward non-productive employees who suck up to you in public, form intimate relationships with a few and let everyone know. Ignore their privacy. Go through their desks, eat their snacks, make loud remarks about your findings.
- Treat everybody the same; give everyone the same rewards. Ignore extra effort and high productivity.
- Don’t waste time and money on training. Get new software but don’t ask users to help customize or test it before installation. Throw new employees into the fray without training or instructions. Enjoy righteous indignation when they don’t meet your standards. Complain that you have to do everything yourself if you want it done right.
- Treat downsized employees poorly; blame the company’s problems on them. Nickel-and-dime them. No personal calls or e-mail, ever! Give yourself huge increases and perks.
- In a budget crunch, give falsely poor evaluations in order to justify giving small raises. Separate evaluations from rewards so you can easily give great evaluations and tiny raises.
These techniques are only the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, you’ll have to master a different set of methods to keep your best employees and replace only the worst.
Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation. To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.