I completely agree with this assessment of how we’ve defined “management” in the past:
“Historically, corporate America’s approach to management has been:
Push management as the only track for career growth
Promote top individual contributors to manage
Provide little to no training
Ultimately this is what will define your culture and your employee engagement. Do your actions match your words? It’s not enough to say you care about mental health, diversity, or developing the people who work for you. You had better put something behind that. If you’ve had layoffs recently, don’t expect anyone to believe that you care about these things on your words alone. Those layoffs told everyone in the organization that they were expendable. They could be next, and the only thing that truly matters is how much they make for you. If you care about their growth, wellbeing and being a diverse company, you had better show up with something other than words.
This might interest some folks who’ve recently been laid off.
There’s a lot of talk coming from organizations about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Too many of them create opportunities that don’t match those words. Office jobs that require workers to be in one place, at the same time, all the time, are inhernetly not as diverse as they could be. Companies that require all of their employees to travel for team events are not as inclusive as they could be. Companies that only hire consultants who will travel to them in peron are not as inclusive as they could be.
Certain jobs require some of these things, but many jobs where the organization requires it can just as easily be done without those requirements. When they do that, they’re not matching what they say about DE&I. They are clearly emphasizing their preferences over their commitment.
Consider the message this sends to employees. This decision was made at a level above the person who is left to explain it to you. No one from that level wants to explain it or answer your questions. That’s not a trustworthy organization. That’s a leader hiding from people being impacted by their decisions.
That’s not a leader I’d want to work for. Some might even argue that they aren’t a leader at all.
When you lose that trust, you’ll lose the retention battle.
Don’t let your programs be junk, fix the culture. Recognize how your culture contributes to the problem and then do something about it.
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