Why do companies not deal with bad managers (interviewing, non-profit, jobs)

[chickenfriedbananas]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

We usually have a thread about bully bosses at least several times a week on this forum. There are plenty of articles as well about people who have experienced it, are asking for advice, made the mistake of going to HR about it etc. Other than my PI from grad school I've never really experienced it. As for my PI I know why he is still there, he brings in money and that is all the University cares about plus he has tenure so unless they get him on tape committing a felony he is there for life.

Academia could probably be spawned off into a topic of its own. All of the problems I've mentioned in the for-profit sector are magnified to infinity in higher ed. Again, universities have gargantuan budgets, and for all of the complaining about how they're not being funded by local and federal governments, they seem to be raking in the revenue pretty regularly. Specific departments usually get grant writers and part of a director's job is to network and lobby for government and private-sector funding. The higher ed *industry* has impulses every bit as capitalistic as the private sector, though with much greater inefficiency. Whereas the private sector's end-game is profit (what's left after expenses) and return on equity, higher ed seeks to perpetually increase revenue and build bureaucracy. As long as the revenue's coming in, waste away!

[macroy]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

Which might also not be very effective as a manager that is after or bullying someone is probably not going to give said worker good performance ratings. What would be more illuminating is if a worker who worked for one manager and then a new manager comes in and the performance ratings plummet and if their is a consistent pattern of formerly good employees having their performance ratings plummet after moving to that manager that or vice versa having their performance rating greatly increase after transfering is a good indicator that said manager isn't doing their job well.

You can go back and forth with this all day long. The above can also be explained with other factors (male/female bias, personality, etc.). The bottom line is YES - there are certainly situations where a bad manager should be removed but are not. But there are also situations where it is perceived that way, but the root cause is actually other factors. Or a combination of all the above.

Now, if we are just talking about the specific situations where a manager has no business being in the role, but nothing is done about it. Well, that's just the "injustices" of life. Nothing is perfect. These things are going to happen. Just as having a bad employee not being fired, etc. On the flip side, you can have a very good manager get fired for no good reason, etc.

[mizzourah2006]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

One thing that constantly puzzles me is I read storied about antisocial, even borderline psychotic managers all the time. It often turns up as one of the top reasons workers quit. So once it becomes clear that the manager is a problem, why do companies not do something about it by either demoting/firing the individual or at the very least send them for retraining?

Turnover is a very expensive issue for companies and large turnover even more so. Poor morale which leads to worker disengagement is also a very expensive problem for employers. So again why don't companies do something?

It's not just bad managers. Companies don't deal with bad employees most of the time. What typically happens is they work to get them a job in another department to get them out of their hair.

People won't have tough conversations. At my company only about 1-2% of people get performance ratings that suggest they are not doing their job. Yet, when you sit down with that groups leadership behind closed doors it is closer to 20%. This continues as you go up the chain, so it is both individual contributors and management.

I think it's because no one wants to have that type of difficult conversation. You will have a legal headache if you fire someone for poor performance when their entire performance history suggests no performance issues. It's very difficult to fire someone when all signs suggest they are actually doing their job well.

Originally Posted by chickenfriedbananas

Interesting you mention HR, as they can be an equal-opportunity nuisance. A lot of HR depts. are so afraid of litigation that they refuse to make decisions and ask managers to endure poor performance until the HR is convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that they can't be sued. Sometimes it's past the point of absurdity. Again, though, these kinds of companies are dysfunctional in more than just one office or one department. High tolerance for pain, to their own detriment.

Above is why. If management would document poor performance HR wouldn't have to be concerned about litigation.

[hopefulone]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

Which is why a sensible company would do an investigation and conduct exit interviews and such especially if one specific manager has higher turnover compared to others at the same company even doing similar work.
Once it becomes clear "I can't work with Joe, Joe created a hostile environment, was consistently insulting, rude, unreasonable, denied my PTO for no reason when I asked 3 months in advance etc. something should be done to remedy that situation before more good talent ends up working for your competitor thanks to Joe.

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by joe from dayton

A lot of managers aren't trained, so there is no retraining to send them to.

Managers may not exactly be trained but should be, especially in harassment and re-trained regularly. That said, so should subordinates to know to not do that themselves.

Just because the employees know there is a problem does not mean that upper management knows there is a problem.

Sadly no and often it is hard for upper management to know until it is too late whether it is turnover or lawsuits from unheard complaints with hostile workplaces, harassment or retaliation.

As long as the job is getting done, there will be a reluctance for most upper managers to do anything, especially if the manager in question supervises a low paid/low skill work force.

So long as it ain't hurting the bottom line whether it productive or costs from retraining old hires and training new hire replacements from turnover.

Originally Posted by macroy

What about a manger or 5 associates? 10 associates? a revolving door of associates?

Again, answers are not always so obvious.

Exactly. One person barring harassment lawsuits, is relatively an easy answer unless it is documented. When you lose five to 10 under a certain manager but not any others, a trend is starting to form.

Originally Posted by stygmata

"My manager is a mean old poopy-head" <> a bad manager

Not exactly Bill Cosby.

Originally Posted by chickenfriedbananas

There has to be a consequence beyond just high turnover before anyone's going to take action to remove a manager. If some new hotheaded manager comes up and forces good people with a proven track record to quit, that might get the attention of upper management, but not until key initiatives get delayed or sales plummet as a direct result will there be any itch to get rid of Manager Hothead.

High turnover can be less productive as there would need to move employees and possibly re-train them or train several new hires to replace departing employees. Then there's also harassment lawsuits that will suck a lot from the bottom line. Even one is costly.

Originally Posted by Nor'Eastah

Exactly. The company won't get rid of them because they're doing what the company wants. It may seem ridiculous to the underlings, but the bosses are getting what they want, so the manager stays.

Until the manager gets a string of lawsuits to their name...

Originally Posted by C8N

Let's talk about the flip side.
You know what turns a person into a raging lunatic?
Crunch time combined with brain dead and/or lazy employees.

Perhaps they were sociopaths outside of work, their SO controls their lives at home so this is their outlet, the manager is projecting anger from their managers onto employees, etc.

Originally Posted by chickenfriedbananas

Interesting you mention HR, as they can be an equal-opportunity nuisance. A lot of HR depts. are so afraid of litigation that they refuse to make decisions and ask managers to endure poor performance until the HR is convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that they can't be sued. Sometimes it's past the point of absurdity. Again, though, these kinds of companies are dysfunctional in more than just one office or one department. High tolerance for pain, to their own detriment.

HR also have to deal with all the alleged harassment and discrimination claims too.

Originally Posted by oldtrader

One thing that the employees that complain about managers do not take into consideration is: The employees are below the quality needed for the job, and the managers are always at their wits end getting the production quota done. This can be a product, or paper work, but it is a needed product done by the employees.

That is somewhat true. However it's not all about managers being about the production. Some managers are bad period. Also not every employee is truly below quality either.

If the employees and the managers do not have the same goals, then the employees feel they have a bad manager. The manager on the other hand, wishes he/she could fire half the staff, and get in some good employees.

That is one, but there are several. Another is demeanor. There's a difference between saying your report was crap and you're report wasn't good and here's why.

The managers at the top, understand the problem the manager is going through, and of course are not going to fire the manager as long as he/she meets their production quotas.

Or brings a lot of lawsuits whether it is wrongful termination, discrimination or sexual harassment.

An awful lot of good managers from the companies point of view, are hated by their employees, as they actually expect the employees to do a certain amount of work, and the employees resent being pushed. This can be anything from actually expecting them to work.

Part of that is micro-managers. Only a certain subset of the population actually like them and are willing to work with them. I experienced one in boy scouts as black scoutmaster who wanted me to be theory x and rode me while not riding most of the black kids in the troop. He continually ave second chances to back kids in the troop while it would be bloody murder for me and other white kids in the troop. I experienced one later under different circumstances and she was a bad manager for the specific role (resident hall director for upper classmen) but would be better in other role (resident hall director for freshmen.)

The employees and their managers do not see eye to eye a lot of the time. The employees often fail to realize that there are three ways of doing things. The right way, the wrong way, and the company way. The company has determined how they want things done, and the amount of production that an employee is expected to do. Just because the employees expect to able to do it one way, does not mean that is how the companies want it done.

You mean two ways, the company way IS the RIGHT WAY in THAT company. If you do things the right way but don't do it the company way, IT'S NOT THE RIGHT WAY. How do I know this and I am a millennial while you are considerably older and more experienced?

The manager is given quotas to get a job done. Number of allowed employees, and the performance goals, and must stay within budget doing it . The only thing that matters to top management, is did the manager accomplish their goals. . Their job is to meet goals set by the top management, and if they do it they may very well upset some or all of their employees. Meet their goals, and they are doing their job without regard to whether the employees like them or not.

Not exactly, they do really want goals accomplished or beaten BUT they also can't allow continuous turnover and lawsuits over the same person. Three lawsuits is a pattern as is say five periods of continuous turnover by several employees by quitting after probationary periods ended whether it is a month or a year.

[DriveNotCommute]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

However, as I stated in my original post. Turnover, especially of skilled professionals is an expensive issue as is poor morale and worker disengagement. It is hard to believe any manager with high turnover (other than menial job where that is normal) can be financially efficient nor efficient productivity wise (constant retraining of new employees). This is especially true if those quitting are the best talent rather than slackers.

Could it simply be that most metrics relied upon by upper management are too short term by nature? During the course of daily tasks, it's pretty easy to fall into a mindset that's more short-term than long term.

For example, the first symptom is going to appear to be at the lower employee level. It appears then disappears. When another one happens months down the road, it is just another exceptional issue and is lost in the tidal wave of higher priority events that's got the upper management's attention. If they are spaced out far enough, there just won't be an obvious link and would require a particularly perceptive or experienced director to consider that there's a systemic issue.

The normal human mind simply has biases that lead to people missing long term, big picture correlations. Although I guess one could argue that it is the senior manager/director's responsibility to find and handle those trends too since they are both empowered and paid to do so.

Originally Posted by MPowering1

I'll be the first person to say that companies are promoting people into management positions without the proper training and/or personalities to do the job.

But when you write about management and upper management you use words like sociopaths and borderline psychopaths. Do you know how many of us here are in management, Dr. Phil?

GiantRutgersFan and another poster or two are correct in saying it goes both ways. I doubt you would patiently tolerate posts from people criticizing 'sociopathic employees who will never get into management because they're borderline psychotic and antisocial nutjobs'.

I'll have more respect for you if you don't try and backpedal or do damage control. And honestly, I don't want to have to sift through your posts to link to them to prove my point, but will if I'm forced to. Man up and accept the fact that this is what you, and a few others, do.

I'm trying to patiently point that out to you because it's gotten as old as the "Milennials are all" and "Babyboomers are all" threads.

He has made some generalizations in other threads but in this particular one the focus is specified to be bad managers only. Interpretation of "bad" was left somewhat open and many people followed up on this point. I don't think there is any problem with this topic, since it isn't that all managers are bad but that there is a perception that there are too many bad ones who seem to be protected.

Your example reversing the positions doesn't work very well. It's not only managers who want sociopath front line employees out, the normal front line employees don't want to deal with sociopaths either. On top of that, managers should be held to a higher standard. They are in a position of responsibility, it is their duty to exercise good leadership and they are usually compensated accordingly.

It feels like you are taking this topic a little too personally. Granted, there seems to be an accumulation of discussions elsewhere that probably led to your discontent here but this probably isn't the right thread for calling out MSchemist80 on the things that you didn't like.

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by GiantRutgersfan

It happens both ways. There are some absolutely horrible employees who stick around for multiple years.

My guess is that no one wants to deal with the problem or be "the bad guy" and fire them.

Perhaps or the company doesn't fire people unless they really need to.

Originally Posted by bobtn

A few deal with them. One large corp with a regional hq in Tn (division), I knew an H/R exec who was having folks compile data cross-referencing voluntary attrition and employee performance rating by manager. His intent, like Welch's 20/70/10 employee measurement was to fire the bottom 10% of managers who were failing to keep their best performers.

I honestly don't know why people don't follow Welch logic more often. Welch's ideas really do work and help companies retain the best people and encourage the right people. More managers need their feet held to the fire and be viewed as expendable if goals arent met including turnover.

Originally Posted by tnff

One thing that happens way too often is the manager is like a vampire -- the reality is only visible to the victim. These managers are very, very good at projecting an image of sweetness and light to their bosses while being a total tyrant to those under them. Making it very hard to show to anyone outside the problem.

This happens alot and some shrug it off to bosses being bosses or it all being in your head.

Originally Posted by yellowbelle

Sure it is. The people the manager is driving to quit may be worthless lumps he/she inherited from a previous manager and he/she now has to clean house. "Wait, you mean I actually have to WORK? And do it well? What a mean old poopy-head. I quit!"

The manager may be new to the role and the people quitting are those who were passed over and not mature enough to hear the feedback of why they weren't promoted.

LOTS of possible reasons for a manager to have higher than normal turnover.

All of these are POSSIBLE but it's also within the realm of possibilities that the manager is the problem, not the employee based on the individual situation.

Originally Posted by chickenfriedbananas

That could be the case, but I've always thought that was really a poor way to deal with the situation. Why not just have a frank discussion and tell someone to their face "I'm sorry to be the bearer of truth, but your performance here isn't meeting expectations and I don't think we can afford to wait for you to improve. We wish you well, but we're going to ask you nicely, now, to find other employment."

See, it's not that hard. Yet a lot of managers think that the intelligent way to deal with people is to be an office ogre. All that does is convince anyone worth a flip in that office who happens to observe that sort of behavior that it's not a safe working environment. That, in turn, drives off other good employees, and it gets to the point where only the desperate apply.

I agree but it is hard to do that in some cases even in at-will states. My mother works at a community center where there's some turnover but most is through quitting rather firings. The place rarely fires even though there is LOTS of cause to go around. The company just doesn't like to fire even if it is to say that their performance don't meet expectations and they can't afford to await improvements.

I think it's terrible management, no matter how you justify it. It's terrible management, and it has a cost, but the problem is, a lot of the managers who engage in that sort of conduct aren't really the ones picking up the tab. It's the shareholders, usually, and most of them are mixing shares of one company with another so a lot of that nonsense flies under the radar until it reaches a crisis stage.

This goes to my point of holding the managers feet to the fire more. A regular employee will get a lot less "opps" quotas due to being more expendable and far less untochable.

Originally Posted by macroy

You can go back and forth with this all day long. The above can also be explained with other factors (male/female bias, personality, etc.). The bottom line is YES - there are certainly situations where a bad manager should be removed but are not. But there are also situations where it is perceived that way, but the root cause is actually other factors. Or a combination of all the above.

Now, if we are just talking about the specific situations where a manager has no business being in the role, but nothing is done about it. Well, that's just the "injustices" of life. Nothing is perfect. These things are going to happen. Just as having a bad employee not being fired, etc. On the flip side, you can have a very good manager get fired for no good reason, etc.

Kind of like the example of the community center (NOT public) that my mother works at that fired maybe 5 people in the 4+ years she has worked there.

[PeaceOut001]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

One thing that constantly puzzles me is I read storied about antisocial, even borderline psychotic managers all the time. It often turns up as one of the top reasons workers quit. So once it becomes clear that the manager is a problem, why do companies not do something about it by either demoting/firing the individual or at the very least send them for retraining?

Turnover is a very expensive issue for companies and large turnover even more so. Poor morale which leads to worker disengagement is also a very expensive problem for employers. So again why don't companies do something?

Lovely topic MSchemist80. I had a manager (one of two who interviewed me) who was an idiot. We had fun during the interview but he was arrogant and worse. I heard the jerk on his phone calling one of his employees at home because the employee left early (and the employee shouldn't have done that). But John couldn't reach the guy at home and instead reamed the guy's son. I reported it to HR as well as other things. HR had a record and it took time to build up enough evidence to ditch the guy. Eventually, John was lead out by an Executive VP but it took years. Two people quit. I was promoted and became John's equal and that went over with him like a lead balloon. It didn't matter. I didn't report to him. The people who left had their slots closed. Those remaining had to pick up their slack. It didn't matter to anyone in my dept. except the workerbees. It didn't matter to HR because we still got the work done. If needed, we could've used Tata to pick up the work (better for the company because they were cheap).

[mdlee3_46041]

Just because a manager is bad in the eyes of employees does not mean that the manager is bad for the company. A manager may follow the handbook exactly as it's written and some employees may not like that because former managers have allowed them to bend the rules a little bit. A manager may put his foot down about people stopping work to talk while the former manager may have allowed employees to chat a bit. Employees may not like these managers and some may even quit because they feel the manager is out to get them just because the manager won't allow the employee to do something that they used to be allowed to do. Meanwhile, the company loves these managers because they are taking steps to improve production and also following company policy.

[DorianRo]

Simple.. It reflects on upper management's boneheaded decisions of hiring the horrible manager to begin with. Also, that bad manager is probably just the monkey boy for upper management and their little puppet that does all the dirty work while the lazy upper management team sit in their corner offices, get all the perks, make all the money, get all the travel, and do nothing at best all day and at worst be destructive