3 Reasons Why Inciting Fear in Employees is Bad for Your Company

3 mins (Read)

Kwabena Brako-Powers

It has been the strategy of many employers and management of some companies, to drive fear into employees. Strategies such as dismissal, suspension, and passing on of promotion are meted out to some outspoken employees. Often, these punishments are carried out to discipline, chide and as it’s termed ‘to-show-them-where-the-power-lies’. Though sometimes undertaken for a noble cause, the end result becomes distasteful resulting in low productivity, pretentious behaviors, and increased turnover rate. Strategies such as these are as old as the word business, however, the million-dollar-worth question is that: are these strategies tenable in this age of our world?

Pretentious Behaviors:

It’s required of employees to give off their best, and to be at their best in the performance of their daily activities. Selfless actions however little, are carried out to improve the competitive edge of the company, and to drive profit. And the achievement of these things are contingent on a good and congenial environment at the workplace. However, when employers succeed in driving fear into employees, the environment become contaminated leading to actions taken to please them. What happens is that, employees are able to work effectively when under observation by the employer, only to reduce their efforts when they are not being watched. The repetitive nature of such a behavior is anathema to organizational productive.

Low Productivity:

No organization wants to lose out in the competition. Every employer as well as management of businesses desires to be one of and/or among the top performing companies in the industry. To ensure the attainment of this goal means that, the organization would have to compete on all fronts including boosting its productivity level to match up with that of industry players. Research works have proven that, employees work better and/or are at their peak performance when their working environment is supportive and is in harmony with their energy. The atmosphere at the workplace should make room for mutual respect, management’s openness to feedback without retribution, bottom-up approach to decision making, and an atmosphere where one’s strength is maximize and weakness minimize. However, in organizations where fear is preached and acted upon, the only avenue opened for the employee is to resign and look elsewhere.

Increased Turnover Rate:

This is what I know that if fear is part of your strategy to contain, sometimes excesses of your employees, then you will have to replace workers every month. You will then need to alert your human resource manager to be on the move. Consequentially, this means that your organization would have to be training new workers every time you replace an old worker. This steals the organization’s time for strategizing, and for increasing productivity. While others are equipping their employees to deliver the goods, you are busy inciting fear into yours because some of them appear smarter than you.

The advance of our world calls for changes in the ways businesses go about doing things. And this means that, employers would have to embrace their employees for mutual benefits. The ‘dog-barking’ style is outmoded in our world of work. At least fear has given way for cooperation, and mutual respect. Employers are now appreciating feedback from their employees recognizing that we exist for one another.