Page 223 - Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles

194 Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work

closer attention to the rules and boundaries so that he or she
may figure out how to push or go around them. A good example
is when companies block websites such as Facebook in an effort
to increase productivity. It should be obvious at this point that
such a show of distrust leads employees to disengage and actu-
ally become far less productive. Interestingly, a recent study
by Professor Brent Coker, from the University of Melbourne’s
Department of Management and Marketing, found that employ-
ees who spent some time surfing the Net were actually more
productive than those who did not. Quite frankly, if you are
really concerned that employees are spending large amounts of
time social networking instead of doing actual work, you have
far more serious problems with employee disengagement than
any policy could address. In general, any policy that attempts
to systematically restrict or track behavior conveys the message
that you don’t trust your employees. In return, employees will
feel highly disrespected and will become disengaged. Remem-
ber, in the game of trust, you need to ante up first.

Trust Breakers

Numerous factors detract from or simply break trust in the
employee-supervisor or employee-employer relationship. All
of them are easy to prevent yet difficult to repair. As you read
through the following list, I encourage you to look carefully at
your own behavior. Again, since we tend to have blind spots
when it comes to our own unbecoming behaviors, I encour-
age you to seek anonymous feedback from team members and
colleagues.

• Lying; any misrepresentation of the truth
• Micromanaging others’ work