Micromanagement | The office rules that infuriate staff

The old expression ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it’ has never been truer than in the case of workplace culture.

Whilst as an HR leader you should always be assessing how your company operates to sniff out any cracks, or the potential for cracks, it’s worth noting that implementing new rules, big changes and updating policies incessantly is a sure-fire way to annoy your own staff to the point at which it starts to affect wellbeing and turnover. The occasional policy tweak is usually welcome, especially when employee wellbeing is kept in mind, though constantly barraging your people with seemingly pointless changes swiftly creates a toxic culture.

In fact, a study by Career Experts found that, with every new rule or policy that a company introduces, morale within the company slips slightly. The more rules that are introduced, the more morale drops – this is especially true if the rules are absurd or nonsensical. So why do bosses feel the need to implement rolling rule changes? This is usually the case for one of two reasons.

Firstly, bosses who are insecure in their own leadership have a tendency to micromanage. Whilst this usually means overseeing every detail of their teams’ jobs, it can also include infinitely tweaking policies.