My sister was an executive vice president in banking. She decided to retire when she saw the sub-prime market starting to go crazy and realized that the way she believed a book of mortgages should be developed and managed differed substantially from others in the industry. Too bad she didn’t stick it out. While my sister is a very strong person and does have a strong sense of justice, I doubt that she would have been able to overcome her high level of correctness to shame the industry into taking the higher road. Nonetheless, she was a very effective leader in her own right and we often discussed how she was managing some of the issues she faced in overseeing her team.
One problem she faced was having to manage a large number of hourly workers. These people were handling a lot of transactions each day, were responsible for entering complex data accurately, and had to answer a lot of inquiries to move transactions through the process. Unfortunately, they were also stressed out and had many items on their agendas, some typical to a traditional hourly workforce. The vast majority of her team members were women who were single heads of households trying to make ends meet while juggling children, elderly parents or other problems that faced them. For many, work provided the only stable environment in their lives.
She learned early on that the best thing she could do for the team was to establish a fair set of rules and guidelines for work and to ensure that these were followed consistently for everyone on the team. Within her team, she had a number of supervisory staff, many of whom had worked their way up to their positions through their own hard work and through promotion. In her mind, it wasn’t the hourly staff who caused the majority of the issues, but rather the way in which some of the supervisors handled the problems.
Favoritism, giving a break once and having the break expected every time, not having the courage to take action when a problem first began, and ignoring some issues all were actions that caused workers to become problems. I certainly am not saying that the majority of issues arose from the supervisory staff, but had the supervisors followed the rules consistently and applied them fairly, many of the people who became problem employees would have been reformed or gone before becoming problem employees.
People become very resentful of problem employees, even though as a leader, you probably aren’t hearing much from anybody. The impact of the problem employee is often far-reaching. Other team members end up taking messages and answering phones, picking up the slack for their troubled worker partner, and generally feeling as if they are being used by the organization. And the impacted team members are unlikely to speak up, since that might make them appear as if they are complaining.
Once the problem worker is gone, however, there is often a sigh of relief. the hidden impact of problem workers can be significant. Since it is a new year, it might be a good time to discuss how supervisors are handling people with problems. Your remaining team members will be greatful.
Filed under: Business Management, Current Discussions, Improving Performance | Tagged: rules and guidelines
