Dear Seniors,
Please let me know how to stop internal politics in office. By the time we were aware of it, it would have taken a big shape and solving such issue is like handling sensitive matters.
A few days back we were forced to terminate 2employees (Keeping employee career in mind i requested my management and asked the employees to put their resignation. We releived them on the same day). We didn't find any other way expect, letting them go.
Both of them started acting like bosses, creating unnecessary rumours about their Department heads, HR and the Management. Demotivating their subordiantes, arguing with co-employers for silly issues, creating their own rules & regulations etc. Intially the management didn't take it too seriously as they were our old employees and they trusted on them rather than the HR. We kept the management timely update after such issue came in light but was of no use. At last we were the one who got blamed. The blame was that we didn't get to know at the early stage. hmmmm..
Kindly let me know how can we sense politics (Any sort) in the early stage itself. What steps can be taken to cut it down then and there? How to handle and convince management if they are not ready to listen what we say as they trust their old employees. Actually few old employees take the liberty of the importance that management give them and likely it becomes difficult to deal with such people.
Seniors need your advise to handle such crucial and delicate situations. Ours is a IT company with 150 employees. Please Help.
- Babu
From India, Madras
85Please let me know how to stop internal politics in office. By the time we were aware of it, it would have taken a big shape and solving such issue is like handling sensitive matters.
A few days back we were forced to terminate 2employees (Keeping employee career in mind i requested my management and asked the employees to put their resignation. We releived them on the same day). We didn't find any other way expect, letting them go.
Both of them started acting like bosses, creating unnecessary rumours about their Department heads, HR and the Management. Demotivating their subordiantes, arguing with co-employers for silly issues, creating their own rules & regulations etc. Intially the management didn't take it too seriously as they were our old employees and they trusted on them rather than the HR. We kept the management timely update after such issue came in light but was of no use. At last we were the one who got blamed. The blame was that we didn't get to know at the early stage. hmmmm..
Kindly let me know how can we sense politics (Any sort) in the early stage itself. What steps can be taken to cut it down then and there? How to handle and convince management if they are not ready to listen what we say as they trust their old employees. Actually few old employees take the liberty of the importance that management give them and likely it becomes difficult to deal with such people.
Seniors need your advise to handle such crucial and delicate situations. Ours is a IT company with 150 employees. Please Help.
- Babu
From India, Madras
Dear Babu,
My replies are given in black font:
A few days back we were forced to terminate 2employees (Keeping employee career in mind i requested my management and asked the employees to put their resignation. We releived them on the same day). We didn't find any other way expect, letting them go.
You should have conducted a domestic enquiry before accepting their resignation. You should have given them chance to defend their case. Later on you could have terminated them.
Now since you gave the short shrift to this basic process of discipline, they have acquired sympathy from other staffs.
However, what has happened in your company happens in most of the companies and conducting domestic enquiry in IT company and then terminating someone is unheard of.
Both of them started acting like bosses, creating unnecessary rumours about their Department heads, HR and the Management. Demotivating their subordiantes, arguing with co-employers for silly issues, creating their own rules & regulations etc.
This is the failure of your leadership. How can anyone make their own rules? Your management should have demarcated areas of authority. Where it starts and where it ends. When this is not done. problems of this kind crop up.
The incident speaks of the culture in your company. Why none of the junior ever raised this matter or rather raised grievance against these senior staffs? Do you have well-articulated grievance handling machinery in place? If yes, have you communicated it to your staffs? If you have communicated, then how many grievances come up every year?
Intially the management didn't take it too seriously as they were our old employees and they trusted on them rather than the HR. We kept the management timely update after such issue came in light but was of no use. At last we were the one who got blamed. The blame was that we didn't get to know at the early stage. hmmmm..
"Fish stinks from head" goes the age old saying. This is what happened in the case at hand too. If someone vitiates the organisation's culture, leadership should have stepped in timely. The delayed action has resulted in this fiasco. To be people-oriented is one thing and tolerating indiscipline is another.
Kindly let me know how can we sense politics (Any sort) in the early stage itself. What steps can be taken to cut it down then and there? How to handle and convince management if they are not ready to listen what we say as they trust their old employees. Actually few old employees take the liberty of the importance that management give them and likely it becomes difficult to deal with such people.
You need to have measures of performance well in place. Measures of performance individually and for the department also. Measures of performance bring focus in everyone's work and politics gets sidelined automatically. Secondly, employee retention should be based on the ability to perform to the desired level. In your case the employees work because they did not resign.
Secondly, there is nothing like convincing management. Management should be mature enough to understand the implications of detrimental politics. Your management is more driven by heart than head.
I don't know whether you have studied Mouton-Blake Management grid. If you have then you will find that your management style of your management borders on the quadrant of "Impoverished Style" and "Country Club" style.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar
From India, Bangalore
My replies are given in black font:
A few days back we were forced to terminate 2employees (Keeping employee career in mind i requested my management and asked the employees to put their resignation. We releived them on the same day). We didn't find any other way expect, letting them go.
You should have conducted a domestic enquiry before accepting their resignation. You should have given them chance to defend their case. Later on you could have terminated them.
Now since you gave the short shrift to this basic process of discipline, they have acquired sympathy from other staffs.
However, what has happened in your company happens in most of the companies and conducting domestic enquiry in IT company and then terminating someone is unheard of.
Both of them started acting like bosses, creating unnecessary rumours about their Department heads, HR and the Management. Demotivating their subordiantes, arguing with co-employers for silly issues, creating their own rules & regulations etc.
This is the failure of your leadership. How can anyone make their own rules? Your management should have demarcated areas of authority. Where it starts and where it ends. When this is not done. problems of this kind crop up.
The incident speaks of the culture in your company. Why none of the junior ever raised this matter or rather raised grievance against these senior staffs? Do you have well-articulated grievance handling machinery in place? If yes, have you communicated it to your staffs? If you have communicated, then how many grievances come up every year?
Intially the management didn't take it too seriously as they were our old employees and they trusted on them rather than the HR. We kept the management timely update after such issue came in light but was of no use. At last we were the one who got blamed. The blame was that we didn't get to know at the early stage. hmmmm..
"Fish stinks from head" goes the age old saying. This is what happened in the case at hand too. If someone vitiates the organisation's culture, leadership should have stepped in timely. The delayed action has resulted in this fiasco. To be people-oriented is one thing and tolerating indiscipline is another.
Kindly let me know how can we sense politics (Any sort) in the early stage itself. What steps can be taken to cut it down then and there? How to handle and convince management if they are not ready to listen what we say as they trust their old employees. Actually few old employees take the liberty of the importance that management give them and likely it becomes difficult to deal with such people.
You need to have measures of performance well in place. Measures of performance individually and for the department also. Measures of performance bring focus in everyone's work and politics gets sidelined automatically. Secondly, employee retention should be based on the ability to perform to the desired level. In your case the employees work because they did not resign.
Secondly, there is nothing like convincing management. Management should be mature enough to understand the implications of detrimental politics. Your management is more driven by heart than head.
I don't know whether you have studied Mouton-Blake Management grid. If you have then you will find that your management style of your management borders on the quadrant of "Impoverished Style" and "Country Club" style.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar
From India, Bangalore
Hi Dinesh,
Thanks alot. Whatever you said makes lot of sense. I do agree with you. But there are few matters left undiscussed, so let me make it clear. Actually without proper enquiry and records we the HR people as well as management would have never arrived for such a crucial decision. I personally hate terminating anyone.
We had a meeting with both the employees to hear what they have to defend themselves, but to our surprise they insisted that neither HR nor management can interfere in their team issues. One of them said am project manager of my team and the other is the Tech Lead, its our team and we can formulate anything that we wish to, for you we have to deliver the work ontime thats it, if you feel that employees leave because of our set up rules then bring us new ones, after all you people are here for that. We are the key people in this team, so if you want us to continue then don't interfere in our team issues, never and ever teach us what to do. They were not in a position to hear to what we say as they didn't like to be questioned and more over the management didn't support them.
Suddenly management interupted them saying, if so you are stick to what you say then we don't need you anymore. We terminate you on grounds of bad attitude and violating the policies. The management left the place giving no chance for them to speak anything.
We called all their team members for a meeting to find out why didn't they speak out when issues started to arise from the early stage itself and you know what was their reply - Sir, management including HR always say that these two are like pillars to the company, we know the level of importance that you have for them, we even don't even know the way you people react as that is the level of trust you have on them, moreover we are junior people and we have to think 10 thousand times before we point on our seniors, even if we raise the issue you will never come to a conclusion based on a person issue and for sure we cannot expect others will have that guts to speak out, what evidence can we show and so on...
After all the discussions held i came up with a suggestion to have a internal portal where employees can lodge their issues and the same has to be monitered weekly to arrive to an decision such that it puts an end to these sort of issues as well as employees can trust on the management that justice will be done for them. Actually i didn't have confidence that they will accept my idea as am a junior person in my team, that too joined just 2 months back, even then i made up my mind to make an attempt and approached them. Luckily they accepted it.
Now all issues raised by our employees are given high priority and we solve it then and there without mentioning the name of the employees. Now employees are feeling free to reach management via this internal portal to escalate and resolve such issues. If an employee raises silly matters and try to project it as a issue, then we call him/her for a meeting so that they understand and doesn't repeat it again.
Now this incident had been a eye opener to our management too. I just wanted to know if there are any other ways to sense the politics happening withing a team or between employees. Please share your experiences too.
- Babu
From India, Madras
Thanks alot. Whatever you said makes lot of sense. I do agree with you. But there are few matters left undiscussed, so let me make it clear. Actually without proper enquiry and records we the HR people as well as management would have never arrived for such a crucial decision. I personally hate terminating anyone.
We had a meeting with both the employees to hear what they have to defend themselves, but to our surprise they insisted that neither HR nor management can interfere in their team issues. One of them said am project manager of my team and the other is the Tech Lead, its our team and we can formulate anything that we wish to, for you we have to deliver the work ontime thats it, if you feel that employees leave because of our set up rules then bring us new ones, after all you people are here for that. We are the key people in this team, so if you want us to continue then don't interfere in our team issues, never and ever teach us what to do. They were not in a position to hear to what we say as they didn't like to be questioned and more over the management didn't support them.
Suddenly management interupted them saying, if so you are stick to what you say then we don't need you anymore. We terminate you on grounds of bad attitude and violating the policies. The management left the place giving no chance for them to speak anything.
We called all their team members for a meeting to find out why didn't they speak out when issues started to arise from the early stage itself and you know what was their reply - Sir, management including HR always say that these two are like pillars to the company, we know the level of importance that you have for them, we even don't even know the way you people react as that is the level of trust you have on them, moreover we are junior people and we have to think 10 thousand times before we point on our seniors, even if we raise the issue you will never come to a conclusion based on a person issue and for sure we cannot expect others will have that guts to speak out, what evidence can we show and so on...
After all the discussions held i came up with a suggestion to have a internal portal where employees can lodge their issues and the same has to be monitered weekly to arrive to an decision such that it puts an end to these sort of issues as well as employees can trust on the management that justice will be done for them. Actually i didn't have confidence that they will accept my idea as am a junior person in my team, that too joined just 2 months back, even then i made up my mind to make an attempt and approached them. Luckily they accepted it.
Now all issues raised by our employees are given high priority and we solve it then and there without mentioning the name of the employees. Now employees are feeling free to reach management via this internal portal to escalate and resolve such issues. If an employee raises silly matters and try to project it as a issue, then we call him/her for a meeting so that they understand and doesn't repeat it again.
Now this incident had been a eye opener to our management too. I just wanted to know if there are any other ways to sense the politics happening withing a team or between employees. Please share your experiences too.
- Babu
From India, Madras
Other then portal, i feel a regular session with the team would be more than enough. Again it depends on employee strength, i mean how many employees are there under an individual HR vertical.
I remember when i was with HCL technologies last year, our HR vertical hardly come for one to one session(once in a year at max) reason being for 300 employees only 1 HR vertical, on the other hand the common web portal where we could have share the issues, we never received a valid response, which made employees really frustrated and thereafter quit the organization.
Regards
Vikash Kumar
Linux Admin
OperaSolutions, Noida
From India, Delhi
I remember when i was with HCL technologies last year, our HR vertical hardly come for one to one session(once in a year at max) reason being for 300 employees only 1 HR vertical, on the other hand the common web portal where we could have share the issues, we never received a valid response, which made employees really frustrated and thereafter quit the organization.
Regards
Vikash Kumar
Linux Admin
OperaSolutions, Noida
From India, Delhi
Dear All participents,,
thaks alot .
acually this topic is most impotant in our daily activities..and this will not teach in any stage of our study..only one way to get such knoledge is this type of site.
hear we can get problem and exaples with clear solutions..thanks once again to all.
khan.
hyd.
From India, Mumbai
thaks alot .
acually this topic is most impotant in our daily activities..and this will not teach in any stage of our study..only one way to get such knoledge is this type of site.
hear we can get problem and exaples with clear solutions..thanks once again to all.
khan.
hyd.
From India, Mumbai
Hi All,
We can never root out internal politics but we can fight with it help of ) Skip level meeting,
Skip level meeting means meeting where HR or management meets juniors or new joiners one by one or in group in where there managers are never invited. To make it transparent You can send mails to their senior and told them to send their juniors as for skip level meetings .
Warm regards
Shraddha
HR- exe
From India, Mumbai
We can never root out internal politics but we can fight with it help of ) Skip level meeting,
Skip level meeting means meeting where HR or management meets juniors or new joiners one by one or in group in where there managers are never invited. To make it transparent You can send mails to their senior and told them to send their juniors as for skip level meetings .
Warm regards
Shraddha
HR- exe
From India, Mumbai
Hi Vikash,
Thanks for your inputs. Quarterly we conduct one-to-one session with our employees but they hardly open their mouth to comment on the current issues. Hope they are scared of their seniors. But now as my management came down and had a session with all the employees, they are feeling free to bring all the issues to our notice.
Thanks to all friends for their inputs.
- Babu
From India, Madras
Thanks for your inputs. Quarterly we conduct one-to-one session with our employees but they hardly open their mouth to comment on the current issues. Hope they are scared of their seniors. But now as my management came down and had a session with all the employees, they are feeling free to bring all the issues to our notice.
Thanks to all friends for their inputs.
- Babu
From India, Madras
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10 Simple Ways to Combat Office Politics.pdf