WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES HATE YOU AND WHAT …

1 Copyright, 2006 Bruce L. KatcherWHY your EMPLOYEES HATE YOU ANDWHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT ITBy: Bruce L. Katcher, DRAFT MANUSCRIPT 1-9-06 Copyright, 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 2 of 187 -1-9-06 TABLE OF to Treat EMPLOYEES Like Adults Feel Like Know How to Do My Job, Why Can t They Just Let Me Do It? Am Afraid to Speak Appreciates My Hard Are Different Rules For Different to Gain the Respect of your Doesn t Listen to Doesn t Respect Who s In Charge Anyway? Don t Trust the Information I Receive From Boss is to Provide EMPLOYEES With What They Really ve Lost Confidence in re Don t Receive the Information I Need to Do My Job Need More Quality of Our Products and Services is Receive Poor Service From Other s Too Much Red Tape Don t They Get Rid of All of the Dead Wood Around Here?

2 Are Too Many Damn to Provide EMPLOYEES With What They m Not Paid s Just Not Right That We All Receive the Same Performance Reviews Are s No Link Between My Pay and Job Cost of My Benefits is Eating Up My to Make W-O-R-K Something Other Than a Dirty 4-Letter Hate Coming in to Work. It s Become Just a Job For Me m Dreading Returning to Work From My s No Job Security ve Got No Time for My Self or My Feel Trapped. I Wish I Could Go Out On My Would Love to Leave. The Only Reason I Stay Here is the , 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 3 of 187 -1-9-06 DEDICATIONI would like to first thank my clients for partnering with me to help make theirorganizations more productive and satisfying places for their EMPLOYEES you to my family who is always tremendously supportive of my career asan independent consultant.

3 Thanks Trinka, Ben and you to my colleagues at the Society of Professional Consultants whohave given me strength, friendship, and intellectual , thank you to my brother-in-law and good friend, Adam Snyder, forhelping me to put my ideas into a coherent and readable , 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 4 of 187 -1-9-06 INTRODUCTIONE mployees today hate management. Hate is a very strong word. But, it s hate management because they feel they re treated like children,and they don t trust what management tells them. They feel underpaid, andthat they are being forced to shoulder more and more of the cost of their healthbenefits. And they believe their jobs are negatively impacting the quality of theirlife. Most feel powerless to do anything about these concerns. They re fearfulof losing their jobs and believe that even if they were to find new employment,they would only encounter the same do I know this?

4 I know it because as a management consultant since1983, I ve accumulated an extensive database of how EMPLOYEES view theirwork and what organizations can do to improve the workplace. At the time ofthis writing, the Discovery Surveys, Inc. Normative Database contains theresults from surveys we ve conducted for 65 organizations representing theviews of more than 50,000 unhappiness is a problem for EMPLOYEES , to be sure, but it s also aneven more serious problem for a company s bottom line. While few employeeswill actually come out and tell management they re unhappy, they insteaddemonstrate passive aggressive behaviors in ways that are harmful to thecompany. They keep good suggestions to themselves and intentionally do theleast amount of work possible. The worst part is that they refuse to fully committo the goals of the management care?

5 Are they listening to the cries of EMPLOYEES ? Insome organizations, the answer is yes, but in most it s no. Copyright, 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 5 of 187 -1-9-06 Organizations can avoid having unhappy EMPLOYEES by successfullyaddressing their concerns. The purpose of this book is to help seniormanagers and human resource professionals understand why theiremployees are unhappy and what they can do to make their place of work amore friendly and productive firm, Discovery Surveys, Inc., conducts employee opinion surveys fororganizations. My clients use my services when they want to gain an objective,quantitative understanding of the views of their EMPLOYEES . EMPLOYEES areoften leery of telling management how they really feel. I serve as an objectiveconduit of these thoughts and managers pour over tons of data to manage their business.

6 They readdaily reports containing numbers about sales, expenses, and the value of theirassets. But they also need a quantitative report of the psychological health oftheir most important asset, their EMPLOYEES . This is what I provide. They thenuse this information to identify areas of discontent and track their success attrying to improve the a typical employee survey program, I meet with senior management tolearn about their business and gain an understanding of what they really needto know from their EMPLOYEES . I also have the opportunity to meet face-to-facewith EMPLOYEES to learn what s really on their minds and what they wantmanagement to know. These different perspectives help shape myunderstanding of the climate of the , 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 6 of 187 -1-9-06 Again, EMPLOYEES hate management because they re unhappy and , it doesn t have to be this way.

7 This book outlines specific steps bothmanagement and EMPLOYEES can take to make the workplace more tolerableand to reduce the ongoing war between them. Each section addresses aspecific issue our research shows EMPLOYEES are complaining about. I willthen talk about why this concern is a problem, the underlying psychologycausing the problem, and most importantly, what can be done about , 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 7 of 187 -1-9-06 CHAPTER IHOW TO TREAT EMPLOYEES LIKE ADULTSC opyright, 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 8 of 187 -1-9-061. We feel like out of every 2 EMPLOYEES believes management does not treat employeeswith respect and telephoned my sister one morning at her office. She works in the credit andcollections department of a small medical equipment rental firm. We had beenspeaking for less than a minute when she told me that she had better hang had just received an email message from her supervisor sarcasticallyasking her if she was on break.

8 The next day she found out that her boss wasactually reading her private emails and listening to her private telephoneconversations. Needless to say, she was outraged. But what could she do?The company has every legal right to spy on her and she desperately neededthe job. She felt like a is a form of slavery. This is a provocative analogy and may beoffensive to some, but it is key to understanding why EMPLOYEES are Webster defines a slave as, "a person who has lost control of him orher self and is dominated by something or someone else." This is preciselywhat happens in the workplace. No wonder many EMPLOYEES , shackled to theirjobs with little freedom to control their day-to-day work or their career, feel are "dominated" because what they do, when they do it, and wherethey do it are controlled by their employer.

9 In return for pay and benefits, EMPLOYEES must conform to set work hours, dress codes and work rules. Theymust dutifully follow management s orders and maintain good relationshipswith their supervisors and coworkers. Also, many have very little say in howCopyright, 2006 Bruce L. Katcher- 9 of 187 -1-9-06they perform their work. In short, they are like slaves because their employercontrols their time, their space, and their owners of slaves, management often doesn t listen to employeesuggestions or value their opinions. Indeed, they often don t evencommunicate directly with their EMPLOYEES . They communicate insteadthrough intermediaries such as middle managers and slaves, EMPLOYEES are subject to the whims of management. Promisesmade by management are often broken. It is not uncommon for EMPLOYEES toexperience layoffs, salary reductions, increases in what they must pay towardtheir benefits, and the loss of their hard-earned pension benefits.

10 It is also notuncommon for the senior manager masters to personally take home largesalaries for themselves while cutting ProblemEmployees who feel like slaves live in a state of perpetual anxiety about losingtheir jobs. Indeed, our research shows that more than half of all employeesfeel insecure in their jobs. Such anxious EMPLOYEES are typically not the bestperformers. In addition to their tentativeness on the job, they also becomereticent to express their useful opinions or develop innovative approaches tothe , of course, unlike slaves, EMPLOYEES are voluntary workers and arelegally free to leave whenever they please. In practice, however, this is not thecase. Many feel trapped. They don t want to leave their work friends or the pseudo-security of their jobs. They are also intimidated by the prospect offinding another job.