{"id":1090,"date":"2015-11-09T14:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2015-12-05T10:07:19","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T10:07:19","slug":"when-employees-do-what-they-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/?p=1090","title":{"rendered":"Are your employees taking initiatives ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[1<\/sup><\/span>]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>\u00a0e.g. \u00a0“it is useless to request help from my manager(s)”<\/em>, “If I want it to succeed, I need to do it alone”<\/em>\u00a0or “If I want it to get through, I\u2019ll bypass hierarchy and do it with my fellow colleagues”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The “parallel market”<\/span><\/p>\n

It may be difficult to conceive but experience shows that the official hierarchy or organisational structure of an enterprise may\u00a0be bypassed as highlighted in the previous topic\u00a0about isolation and lack of management support.\u00a0Human nature is to be\u00a0in group and in difficult times (transformation, re-organisation, change, …), the group or being part of group is highly re-assuring. So under these circumstances, employees who know each other for a long time or are used to work together tend to regroup in a kind of unofficial network, a\u00a0\u201cparallel market\u201d which has its own behaviour and course of action\u00a0not necessarily in-line with the corporate goals and strategy (see “The shadow of the enterprise”<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Attitude towards change<\/span><\/p>\n

In these potentially chaotic transition times where the organisation structure, methodology, processes and roles are changing, employees may sometimes adopt a withdrawal attitude. As an attempt to achieve some kind of order or simply to be able to continue to function efficiently (sometimes subjectively), they tend to re-shape their role as they see fit from their own standpoint with potential inappropriate effects (see \u201cGaps in processes<\/a>\u201d and \u201cEmployees roles and company culture<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Unclear\u00a0roles definition<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, even when not in transition times, the roles are not sufficiently defined and again employees reshape them as they see fit with the same potential side effects.<\/p>\n

Disengagement<\/span><\/p>\n

We assumed so far that employees are committed with the appropriate corporate mindset but facts are that on average a substantial percentage of employees are actually \u201cactively disengaged\u201d [2]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>[3]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>\u00a0i.e. they potentially willingly take actions or behave in a way that do not serve the company interest. Considering that only 13% of employees are engaged worldwide [2]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>, this aspect must not be taken lightly.<\/p>\n

As a conclusion, it is important to promote\u00a0creativity to favour\u00a0innovation in the company and consequently\u00a0to keep\u00a0employees motivated by taking their ideas and opinions into consideration, but it is equally important\u00a0to efficiently supervise these\u00a0initiatives.\u00a0We can see from the above examples\u00a0that many aspects may lead\u00a0employees to derive from corporate goals and this inevitably raises\u00a0one of the most important management question: how are trust, beliefs, fear and disengagement handled in your company ?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

[1] Belief, wikipedia<\/a>
\n<\/span>[2] Worldwide, 13% of Employees Are Engaged at Work, www.gallup.com<\/a><\/span>
\n[3] Roots and consequences of the employee disengagement phenomenon, \u00a0Elena Heikkeri<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9 Employees may sometimes follow their own ideas or instinct. It\u00a0is good to have engaged, motivated and creative people to favour innovation and progress in the company but this may also induce a problem of cohesion and coherence by preventing a concerted and guided effort towards a common goal.\u00a0When a concerted effort is necessary, uncoordinated\u00a0initiatives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organisation","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":149,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}