Employee Autonomy: Minimize Micro-Management
It is in the best interest of management to strike the right balance
between micro-management and autonomy to avoid issues in the
workplace.
As managers, you must trust in the abilities of your employees. If a manager
is looking over an employee’s shoulder every ten minutes, he or she probably
doesn’t have much trust in their employee’s capability to do a quality job.
It’s vital to include some degree of “do-it-yourself” in the tasks of your
employees. Supervisors must avoid too much micro-managing so employees don’t
feel smothered with oversight.
However, there still must be some degree of regular supervision over the
work of your employees. If there are no periodic checks on employees’ work
whatsoever, employees may begin to feel as if they are not important to the
company and become unmotivated and exhibit decreased workplace
productivity.
Employee satisfaction surveys can explore the appropriate
level of autonomy that is optimal for productivity within a company.
