Prejudice and bias comes in a variety of shapes and forms and it can be found living well in any manager’s office. If you are interested in reflecting on, assessing and then changing the biased way you may think, you can start with examining how it might be affecting decisions you are making right now about your employees:
- The biggest bias is the easiest to understand. When you think that you know what your employees want, you are making an assumption based on history or guesswork and not data. You may think that money in the prime motivator for employee retention, or that a certain type of service is a key for attracting customers or that employees with small children don’t want to travel for work. While no one can deny that money is one factor in people staying with their employers (or that a particular style of service is critical to attracting customers,) or the parents of small children find traveling out of town overly stressful, the shelf life of knowledge is shrinking. Things shift, people change, and without accurate and up-to date information, you may see people leave their jobs in spite of the money you offer, customers leaving product loyalty regardless of the service they receive, or parents opting for employers who allow them to determine how best to manage the pressures of their lives.
- Another bias occurs when you believe that you know what your employees know. The days when a boss knew how to do every job in the firm is a thing of the past. There is simply too much information and it changes too fast for any one person to be knowledgeable about every discreet aspect of any and all jobs. Employees usually know more in their specific area than the boss does. The manager who doesn’t realize this is missing a huge piece of critical information.
- If you ever find yourself thinking that employees complain and don’t appreciate that they have a job and are gainfully employed, you are probably guilty of the predisposition that most people are selfish. Regardless of age or organizational level, people are not loyal to organizations; they are loyal to other people. Today, employees are interested in ‘What’s In It For Them” and the boss should understand that in today’s world of downsizing, reorganizations, and mergers, employees are looking out for themselves and their own career development. That’s not selfish – it’s smart business, Keeping your employees happy, motivated, and engaged is smart business. Thinking that people should be happy to have a job won’t motivating those folks who have a job. It motivates those folks who don’t have a job!
- Today’s business currency is knowledge. If you think good employees are ‘a dime a dozen’ you are sadly mistaken. To stay competitive, you need knowledgeable employees. People are not dispensable commodities; they give your firm the ‘added value’ that separates you from your competitors.
Departing employees are communicating what they think about their organizations and their managers with their feet. If too many are departing your employ, it may because your bias about them is all too clear. If you think your preconception about employees might be part of a turnover problem, it might be time to examine some of your ideas about the people that report to you.
A change in your thinking may be the best first step in retaining talent.
