How a Successful Manager deals with Trivial Matters for Reducing Employee Dissatisfaction?

Sometimes when I get tangled into trivial issues regarding work life, I often think what are the most important factors that makes you a successful professional, rather a successful manager!



There are certain things that a manager has to achieve

• Targets or results
• A motivated team
• Performance

However, it's not in that exact order. He might have been give a target that can be a number of sales leads, revenue or just an intangible results. This is his end goal. For achieving the target, he needs performance for which again he needs to have a team which is efficient and performance oriented. And efficiency comes only with motivation. So, what is then, the foundation of any successful managerial attempt?


How the Team Gets Motivated?

According to Motivation-Hygiene theory of Herzberg- the famous administrative thinker- there are two sets of factors affecting the job attitude of employees- one set leads to satisfaction and the other set of factors leads to dissatisfaction. They are popularly known as Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers

Factors for Satisfaction	Factors for Dissatisfaction
Achievement	Company policy
Recognition	Supervision
Work itself	Relationship with Boss
Responsibility	Work conditions
Advancement	Salary
Growth	Relationship with Peers

An organization can work to improve upon the factors that lead to dissatisfaction. For example, it can make good company policy and maintain better work conditions, pay reasonable salary and on time and the like. However, just removing the factors for dissatisfaction can not bring in the feeling of satisfaction. This can only be brought on by the 'Satisfiers' or the factors for satisfaction that can be called psychological factors.  As such, managers have this great work of analyzing the aspirations, capabilities etc. of their team members so that they are able to make them move towards job satisfaction. When there is job satisfaction, some of the factors that lead to dissatisfaction too get neutralized. For example, low salary or delayed salary is sometimes overlooked by an employee if he gets recognition, growth and sense of achievement form his job.

How do Trivial Matters Play a Big Role in Employee Dissatisfaction?

Based on the above factors, suppose an employee is considerably satisfied with the challenging work he is doing at office and feels the recognition and sense of achievement. Now if this employee is very productive and giving his best for the work, will it be right to irritate him on trivial matters? For example, if the employee is creative, hard working and is taking full interest in his work but he comes half an hour later than what is the initiating time of the office. However, once he is in office, he is fully immersed in discharging his responsibilities. Will it be right to make this issue such a big issue that the employee stops feeling the sense of achievement from his work? Now one argument can be that he works well even after coming late but this sets a bad example for other team members who also start coming late and do not even deliver as much as he does.

So, what's the solution? There can be many.

• Talk to the employee directly in a friendly manner and seek solution from him only. It's better if the manager talks to this team member directly without involving any intermediaries.
• The manager can try to know what is making him come late and then provide solution for the same.
• If there is really a problem that's making the employee behave in such a way and if the issue pertains to something bigger, the management should surely work upon this otherwise in course of time, they might lose a productive employee.
• If there are more than one such employee, the office time can be made flexible. Many companies today work with flexible work hours and they are doing great with employees putting in their best.

Any other suggestion?