In 2020, Gallup found that within organizations where employees perceived health and well-being as properly managed, their organizational performance was two and a half times greater compared to organizations where health and well-being were not properly managed. I was recently interviewed by Amanda Laden, founder of The VinoKarma Project, and she asked me what I believe organization’s three biggest mistakes are.
I shared, number one: organizations are not taking burnout seriously. And here, Gallup is finding that when organizations do take it seriously, when they make health and well-being a priority, performance drastically increases. So today, I’m offering to organizations one very specific, simple, yet direct piece of advice on how you can increase your performance.
Put health and well-being at the top of the list, it’s simple! Eliminate your bad managers.
Eliminate, completely get rid of those managers who are bullying or abusive. Bad managers are your company’s greatest risk – direct quote from Gallup, not me. They are your greatest risk. They are the ones who are working directly with your employees, your top talent. I know exactly what this is like, as I unfortunately worked in a very abusive management situation for several months.
Not only did it impact my performance, it impacted whether or not I wanted to stay at an organization where I had been for over a decade. And through the course of me dealing with that, I found out that over 15 years, some of the top talent of our organization had left specifically because of that bad manager – and many others had considered it, or even gone through their own health situations because of that abusive relationship.
There is no reason to have a manager in place that is any which way abusive. We need, at the foundation, for leaders to be treating people with humanity; being in touch with humanity. Treating people as if they are numbers, just a direct result that’s produced for an organization, is an absolute insult to humanity.
So today, start taking the proactive steps to eliminate those bad managers. In 2021, we are faced with “A Great Resignation.” There are abundant opportunities for your top talent to find positions and growth long-term, outside of your company. And it is not about higher pay – it is about the environment, it is about their own health and well-being. So if you want to retain that top talent, you’ve got to eliminate those bad managers and create health and well-being in a positive way. Put in that infrastructure today, and it starts by getting rid of those bad managers.