Is there any real point in two-way employee dialogue? Before you start calling for the ambulance and shaking your head in shock and disappointment, let me explain. I’m all in favour of people having opinions, and expressing them at every possible opportunity. (No, really?) In fact, the more that people think for themselves the happier I would be.
But in the workplace, particularly in big organisations, I believe a falsehood’s being perpetrated, with pernicious results.
By engaging staff in the larger plans and purpose of the organisation, keeping them informed of all the ups and downs of a company’s fortunes and soliciting their input into how you conduct your business, staff are made to feel responsible for the organisation’s success – and by implication, its failure. Yet most organisations fail not due to the lack of dialogue with or wrong input from staff, but due to poor market conditions, bad decisions and inadequate leadership. Making staff responsible (by involving them in dialogue) for something over which they ultimately have very little control is wrong, and actually counter-productive.
For employees it’s important to know what you can control and what you have no influence over. It allows you to see clearly what works and what doesn’t, to see mistakes for what they are and know that you and your employer are not joined at the hip. We don’t need to know every piece of MI or the minutiae of management decisions in order to do a good job. It’s not about being kept in the dark, it’s about casting light in the right direction, and being honest.
16 December 2009
Need to know?
Is there any real point in two-way employee dialogue? Before you start calling for the ambulance and shaking your head in shock and disappointment, let me explain. I’m all in favour of people having opinions, and expressing them at every possible opportunity. (No, really?) In fact, the more that people think for themselves the happier I would be.
But in the workplace, particularly in big organisations, I believe a falsehood’s being perpetrated, with pernicious results.
By engaging staff in the larger plans and purpose of the organisation, keeping them informed of all the ups and downs of a company’s fortunes and soliciting their input into how you conduct your business, staff are made to feel responsible for the organisation’s success – and by implication, its failure. Yet most organisations fail not due to the lack of dialogue with or wrong input from staff, but due to poor market conditions, bad decisions and inadequate leadership. Making staff responsible (by involving them in dialogue) for something over which they ultimately have very little control is wrong, and actually counter-productive.
For employees it’s important to know what you can control and what you have no influence over. It allows you to see clearly what works and what doesn’t, to see mistakes for what they are and know that you and your employer are not joined at the hip. We don’t need to know every piece of MI or the minutiae of management decisions in order to do a good job. It’s not about being kept in the dark, it’s about casting light in the right direction, and being honest.
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