To,
An Employer
SUB: Corporate Bullying; Behavior Matters

Have you ever paid heed to why a young bright employee who joins your corporate with starry eyes and a spark to deliver the best, often loses his passion with reasons beyond the “Law of Diminishing Returns”? Why his solidarity for the company dwindles and why his spirits goes kaput that eventually results in either brain drain or uninterested stiffened workforce? Whose loss is it…? Why does the much hyped “honeymoon phase” fades away so unceremoniously from a sense of excitement into a lull-period of demotivating air with uninspiring hours? 

One may give the reasons as the nature and load of work, working culture or conditions, inter-personal or intra-personal relationships, remuneration and even passage of time. But that’s not all; there is another side to it too. 

An employee in corporate world tenders effort to fulfill both individual and collective goals of the assigned job, therefore, rightfully termed as “human resource” — bringing in revenue and sometimes goodwill to the company. Now, like any other resource, the ‘human resource’ could either be utilized to the best, improved, upgraded, conserved and reinvigorated over-time. That or it could be exploited, mishandled, ravaged and “used-and-thrown” as carelessly as possible.

A reprimand from a senior undoubtedly works like a self-check especially to speed up tasks but, could ‘yelling’, ‘name-callings’ and unparliamentarily ‘abuses’ really prove motivating?

While it may serve as an example in front of an open office — it surely doesn’t go down well, neither in terms of work ethics nor general humanity. The temporary push of ‘negative reinforcements’ may eke-out some iota of productivity but the person broils within because of apathy and insult.

The rise in expectations at workplace viz-a-viz the real challenge to keep motivations up however, doesn’t work always. The general management rule – “come with solutions, not problems” – goes a long way in resolving work-related maladies and proves great in keeping the machinery focused and running.  However, somewhere in the process of “demanding results”, many forget to add ‘that’ simple human touch of a decent, civil behavior.

Heeding the excerpt from the book “Time Management – Make Every Second Count” (Bly, Roberts) – (sic) “Although, machines and chemicals don’t care whether you scream and curse at them, people do. Your staff and co-workers are not just engineers, administrators, clerks, and programmers; they’re people, first and foremost… with families and friends, likes and dislikes… with feelings. Respect them as people and you’ll get their respect and loyalty in return. But treat them coldly and impersonally and they will lose the motivation to perform for you.”

“Corny as it sounds, the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” – is a sound, proven management principle. The next time you’re about to discipline a worker or voice your displeasure, ask yourself, “Would I like to be spoken to the way I’m thinking of speaking to him or her?”

I do understand that this letter may hardly make any difference to your perspectives as our viewpoints may not match; yet if we could even ‘agree to disagree’, imagine what a clear channel of communication could help us accomplish together. The seeped in abrasive platitude behavior is worth paying attention to for bringing efficiency and mental peace, and for maintaining a cordial trustworthy workforce. 

Wishing well,
An Employee Who Also Matters