Removing senseless bureaucracy: Every organization has needless rules. The questions is how should you deal with them?
Enhancing employee engagement secret #3: Removing senseless bureaucracy
In nearly every organization that we partner with, we come across examples where employees have felt there to be senseless controls and bureaucracy. Unnecessary regulations prevent employees from using their own common sense, and are one of the quickest ways to create immense frustrations. Left unchecked, such frustrations very quickly damage employee engagement and employee commitment.
The 8 secrets to enhancing employee engagement
The majority of the high performing organizations we survey eliminate as many idiotic rules as possible, and ensure that they quickly address those rules that make life hard for employees. The majority of organizations have needless rules, but the question is: how should you deal with them?
The 8 Secrets to enhancing employee engagement
Get your your copy of the Report: The 8 Secrets to enhancing employee engagement
DownloadEliminating idiotic rules
One of the best examples that we have encountered, was from an organisation in the health industry.
For the organization in question, it was important for them to enable employees to be able to alert senior management and HR of rules that were hindering their work. The organization therefore decided that they would introduce a quick and easy way for employees to flag what they thought were idiotic regulations. In order to achieve this, the organization built into their intranet a button known as the “Kafka button”.
Enhancing employee engagement secret #1
The button gave employees a simple and convenient way to flag up senseless rules. Once an employee flagged up a rule, the board of the organization in question promised the employees that the issue of the flagged rules would be discussed, and whenever possible, resolved. Such a pro-active approach thus helped the organization to at very minimum explain the frustrating rule, and in most cases remove it, resulting in reduced employee frustration.
The fine line
One of the biggest dilemmas that organizations face, especially large ones, is the balance between regulatory compliance on the one hand, and allowing employees as much freedom as possible on the other. Organizations are faced with more and more legislation and regulation, and we increasingly see that they’ll be lambasted – for instance, through social media – should anything go wrong.
It has become increasingly necessary for organizations to prevent mistakes, whilst avoiding patronizing employees. Creating a framework that gives employees enough freedom, but still keeps them inside the lines is an art. The challenge is to find this balance and whilst doing so, keep in perspective just how damaging the frustrations from idiotic rules can be.
The 8 enhancing employee engagement secrets series
- A compelling organizational direction
- Inspiring leadership
- Removing senseless bureaucracy
- Less management
- Value the specialists
- Social innovation
- Transparency and information sharing
- A modern compensation system
Book a free demo. See our solutions in action.
Effectory is Europe’s Leading provider of Employee Listening Solutions. Schedule a product demo and discover how to enhance your employees’ engagement.
Demo request