Overcoming Employee Politics

 

Introduction

Workplace politics is identified as a manifestation of power dynamics among co-workers, with people leveraging such power dynamics to further interests of a group they have affiliations with, as well as furthering their own interests (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018).  Such behavior is often considered inevitable, considering the inherently political nature of human beings which drives them in taking whatever steps towards protecting their own interests. A problem in the context of HR is when these personal motivations and interests tend not to be aligned with those of the organisation, ultimately resulting in management and employees not agreeing on the company vision.

Identifying employee politics in the workplace

With employee politics involving employees engaging in behind-the-scenes endeavors of achieving personal goals within their organization, negative employee politics is identified to have the potential of dividing organizations (Naman, 2019).  Negative employee politics in the workplace are characterized by:

·         Employees playing dirty at the expense of others, for instance, observing a colleague making a mistake on a task, and turning back on them and reporting this to superiors with offers of correcting the error

·         Personal rewards of individuals not aligning with organizational rewards

·         People not regularly producing results are not reprimanded or asked to leave

·         Average employees possess little knowledge in relation to, and visibility of, company decision-making

·         Closed-door meetings involving exclusive information which is not revealed to the rest of the company

·         A perceived distance between company executives and lower-level employees

Overcoming workplace politics in the organization

Fostering a culture of positive workplace politics commences from the top of the organization, so as to influence appropriate behavior in the rest of the organisation (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018).  Behaviors towards overcoming negative workplace politics include:

·         Doing not what is only right for the team, but also for the entire organization

·         Networking, aligning and building strong relationships across the organization, in contrast to being cliquish or avoidant

·         Stopping negative workplace politics in their tracks

·         Instituting firm policies that are supporting open feedback

·         Not engaging in gossip in the workplace

·         Supervisors not isolating themselves from employees, since distance commonly leads to negative power dynamics

In addition, each employee properly understanding their role as well as how it is contributing towards company success and then being expected to deliver, serves as an important aspect of demanding accountability from all employees and overcoming employee politics. Similarly, executives making efforts of being more accessible and transparent are found to effectively reduce impacts of employee politics impeding organizational success (Dillion, 2014).

 

References

Dillion, K. (2014). HBR Guide to Office Politics. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Hertel-Fernandez, A. (2018). Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Naman, S. (2019). Analysing Workplace Deviance in Modern Organisations. Oxon: Routledge.