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From intern to executive, no employee enjoys being micromanaged. Instead of focusing on the big picture of employee management and trusting workers to take care of the small stuff, a micromanager dictates every small step along the way and can quickly drive talent away.
Micromanaging may not be detrimental in the short-term, but it's an employee management technique likely to hurt your company in the long-term. A study by the Journal of Experimental Psychology found people who believe they’re being watched perform at a much lower level. This corroborates an earlier study from 2003, when employees singled out micromanaging as the single biggest productivity barrier they faced at work.
This style of management is unlikely to improve your company culture or your workers’ motivation to succeed. By micromanaging your employees, you’re not only demonstrating a lack of trust, but also impeding their work and progress.
Employee management issues can snowball into an avalanche of disengaged workers, negative company culture, and unfinished goals. So what’s the best way to ensure open communication, employee engagement, consistent feedback and autonomous employees?
Talent alignment within your organization helps you see everything taking place at your company, with no hovering required. Seeing how, if at all, your workforce is on track with overarching company goals ensures the right people are working on the right projects and cuts down on the micromanaging that's sapping the motivation out of your teams.
See Your Workforce Without Hovering
Aligning your workforce with company goals is the best way to improve your employee management. A talent alignment platform like Clear Company allows managers and business leaders to easily see what's happening throughout the entire organization.
You can see exactly what projects your employees are spending their time on, how these projects fit into larger organizational goals, and whether your workers are meeting or missing deadlines. The reason so many leaders fall down the micromanager rabbit hole is that they understand how essential it is to keep productivity aligned with overall company goals. This leads to constant hovering and wasting employees’ time by asking for redundant check-ins and meetings.
Talent alignment allows managers to see what everyone in the organization is working on and how it connects to company objectives, goal alignment takes the "micro" out of managing. Great workers want to feel trusted, and constant "checking in" can do irreparable damage to this , as well as do a real number on your organization's employee engagement and morale. Visualizing how employee projects channel up to company goals and strategy can keep a more thorough eye on what people are working on at the company than any manager.
Address Problems in Real-Time
Good managers realize how costly a small problem can become if allowed to snowball. Using talent alignment, you can easily and quickly address problems as soon as they arise. Hovering over the shoulders of your best people is only likely to cut down their productivity and ruin your company's employee engagement.
With a clear view of your organization, you can get a better picture of how your people are working toward goals. This means, when someone gets off track or a department falls out of line, you can quickly address the problem before it escalates into a larger issue. It allows you to react in real-time and address problems before they escalate. Aligning your workers with goals keeps problems manageable and productivity high.
Increase Employee Engagement By Rewarding Your MVPs
Proper talent alignment means understanding your employees’ unique contributions toward goals without shadowing them. Since you can take a more stand-back approach and offer employees more autonomy, you can fully see your best and brightest employees.
Looking at which workers are ahead of deadlines (and which are behind), you can clearly visualize your high-achievers. Employees who work just as hard when you’re not standing over their shoulder are the people you should be acknowledging, rewarding, and promoting. This will lead to better employee engagement, higher morale and a more positive company culture.
Micromanagement is an easy trap to fall into. By efficiently aligning your talent, and visualizing how their work contributes to your strategy, you can still keep track of everything happening in your organization, address problems and reward the right people. All with no micromanager needed!
