Stop Treating Your Employees Like Children: Why Companies Need to Return to Basics

How Overprotective Management Practices Are Stunting Employee Growth and Undermining Engagement Across Organizations. Focus on WORK not PERKS.

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Several prominent authors like Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) and Abigail Shrier (Bad Therapy) have pointed out that one of the reasons why so many young kids are struggling today in addition to technology is because we have outsourced parenting to therapists who are quick to diagnose every child with a disorder and put them on drugs. We also coddle our kids, don’t give them enough unsupervised free time, and assume that we need to do anything and everything for them instead of treating them as independent little people.

I see the same thing happening inside of our organizations who are becoming the new parents to their children, the employees. Nobody wants to talk about this publicly but this is a huge issue and there’s a massive yet quiet pushback against this.

It’s these same kids and teenagers that are now making their way into our organizations and are expecting to and are accustomed to this unrealistic and dare I say fantasy world.

In a private CHRO group I host (you can email if you want details) and at several events I have been speaking at where I then meet with senior HR leaders, this has been an ongoing concern.

One CHRO told me that she is now having to evolve her company from being a place for children to being a place for adults. This is an all too common pattern that HR leaders are quick to acknowledge they helped create, especially during the pandemic.

We have become so obsessed with asking “what can the organization provide to employees” that we forgot to ask “what are the employees providing to the organization?”

If an employee sits at home all day eating junk food, playing video games, not exercising, etc. and then shows up to work saying “I’m not engaged at work,” then why is it the organizations responsibility to solve that problem? Instead, why aren’t we talking about employees being more accountable and responsible for how they lead and live their lives?

If the company does everything for the employees, then just like children, the employees won’t be able to do things for themselves.

Each year American companies spend over $100 billion dollars a year on employee engagement programs with billions more going to well-being initiatives. Yet with all of this investment Gallup’s most recent numbers show we are at an 11 year low for engagement and that nearly half of employees are “watching for or actively seeking a new job.” Only 22% of employees say their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work (strongly agree), only 23% of employees trust the leadership in their organization (strongly agree), 27% of employees say their manager includes them in goal setting (strongly agree), and list goes on and on.

In all of the WORK indicators, organizations around the world are struggling yet these are the very indicators that we seem to be ignoring in favor of engagement and well-being initiatives.

The problem is that instead of focusing on the core aspects of work which make up the employee experience (culture, technology, and space), we continue to invest billions of dollars in second-tier initiatives and it’s hurting employees and our organizations.

It’s no wonder that a recent CNBC article highlighted that the #1 skill that companies are hiring for that is hardest to find is work ethic.

It’s time to stop this and get back to basics…