Are your managers mentors or tormentors?

Down here in the labor front, the factory workers and the office personnel are yearning for managers, supervisors and foremen who shall teach and nurture employees and not terrorize them. The people need mentoring for more skills and counseling for better attitudes and habits. They cannot work well in an environment that insults them, destroy their morale and "kills"' their initiatives and enthusiasm. Frontline managers should not only be technical experts but, above all, must be masters of the art and science of winning workers and influencing human behavior, through excellence in leadership and expertise in communication and motivation. Supervisors who are petty tyrants do not belong to this age of Generations X and Y. Managers who throw their weight around will never succeed in people leadership and management.

These are my messages to the thousands of HR and line managers who attend symposia, conferences and workshops. I have been "wounded and scarred" in the battlefields of personnel management and human resource leadership, for more than forty years. I have earned my right to act as "guru" of the many aspiring and upcoming HR professionals and practitioners. Last week, I was with Governor Junjun Davide in the Radisson Blue Hotel where the Cebu HR managers had their regional conference. My topic was "Why Many Employees 'Hate' Their Employers" the next day, I was the only speaker in a one-day symposium on HR's Best Practices, with focus on positive employee discipline. We analyzed the two volumes written by this columnist: The 8 Secrets of Success In Leading and Managing People, both the legal and the behavioral dimensions.

Experience has taught me that people do not want to be bullied by first-line managers and supervisors. They need to be informed, persuaded, convinced and challenged before they can produce outstanding results. They want immediate feedback, and even in this age of the cyberspace, they still prefer the personal touch. They need to be appreciated, rewarded and challenged again. When they commit mistakes, they want to be heard as human beings, with dignity and pride, and not interrogated like criminal suspects. Whenever there are others who are paid more or put in higher ranks and status, they want to know why and how. They understand and accept the imperatives of productivity and quality but they do not wish to be put in a box where their creativity is stifled, or even ridiculed. They want flexibility and freedom to excel without being ostracized.

Employees want managers who shall respect their individuality. They want to be treated as allies and not suspected of being untrustworthy. Even unions are no longer to be seen as enemies. They are in the same boat with managers and supervisors. Whatever happens to the business, people in the organization, whether managerial or rank-and-file, will either swim together or sink together. The days of adversarial relations are no longer attuned to the temper of the times. Radical unions have lost credibility, and the workers are now war or afraid of them because they have gained the notoriety of being instrumental in the closure of many companies and the loss of many jobs and opportunities.

When company personnel are angry at management because of the tyranny of supervisors and the neglect and ineptitude of managers, these rank-and-file employees can very well sabotage company operations. They can lower the quality of products and services. They can derail productivity initiatives. They can irritate customers, and destroy the goodwill that the company has built for so many years. An unhappy, even angry worker is the weakest link in the organization. Customers, clients, patients and customers judge the companies by the way they are being treated by the lowly, if arrogant, frontliners. At the end of the day, business suffers because of poor employee relations. When managers torment the personnel, instead of mentoring them, then company has a saboteur. A "terrorist" inside its own organization. These "deep penetration agents" of the competitors will erode business viability, bulldoze all PR programs and bring the company to its ultimate collapse and perdition.

If you wish to enhance the morale of your people, rid yourselves of the "viruses'" in the many grave malpractices in employee relations. Before you can go out there in the highly volatile and harsh competitive business environment, to compete and to win over all others, both in the domestic markets, and in the global arena, the first thing to do is to put your house in good shape. You can go to war with the competition if there many "enemies" in your own camp. Have an HR cleansing and discover the untapped but limitless potentials of the human capital. Down here in the labor front, we don't need terrorists among our managers. We need effective diplomats and passionate shepherds of the flock. No more and no less.