18 Biggest HR Mistakes by Employers

1. Failing to create standards. If the company fails to give staff clear expectations so they know exactly what they are supposed to do and how they can self-measure success, it is prescription for disappointment by all. The end result is management then wonders why they are failing.
2. Micro-managing, excessively. If management Creates policies for every contingency and allows no real supervisory discretion in addressing individual employee needs, robot-like adherence to policy will cause supervisors to herald form over substance.
3. Having too few policies. In this situation, employees feel as if they reside in an unfair environment of favoritism and special treatment.
4. Making every task a priority. Staff will believe there really are no priorities and they will believe that they will not be recognized for a complete task or goal.
5. Scheduling daily emergencies that prove to be unnecessary or false. This will cause employees not to know what to do or are cynical about responding when there is a true emergency situation.
6. Asking employees to change the way they are doing something without providing an explanation of what a manager/supervisor is attempting to accomplish with the change.
7. Being impatient during the learning curve. It is unrealistic to expect your staff to learn to do everything perfectly as soon as they are instructed. It is critical to recognize that learning occurs most frequently after repeated efforts which may include failure.
8. Withholding important information to induce failure. This is where a manager/supervisor lets a person fail because of a lack of knowledge when the manager/supervisor had information or had access to information which the person could have used to make a different decision.
9. Creating cognitive conflict by inconsistent messages. This occurs when management appraises workers’ performances, providing performance bonuses and then complaining that management cannot get the staff to work as a team.
10. Excessive “inspections”. If management becomes so overly watchful by adding inspectors, reports and reviews because management does not trust that work will meet standards, this lack of trust is intuitively understood and resented by staff.
11. Adding another level of hierarchy because employees are not doing what management wants them to do. More observation is another way to demonstrate lack of trust.
12. Dis-incentivizing creativity. When management imposes hierarchical approval steps and other obstacles for new ideas to be reviewed, this teaches workers that their ideas will be subjectively rejected. In the end this leaves management to openly question why no one has any suggestions for improvement.
13. Dis-incentivizing creativity – part II. So often management asks for ideas and improvement suggestions, and then fails to empower staff to actually obtain the ideas or to implement any suggestions. (It’s even worse if there is a failure to give feedback about whether the idea was considered.)
14. Trying to disguise top down rule making. This occurs when management makes a decision and afterwards asks employees for input to make it seem as if their feedback mattered. Workers are not fooled but experience resentment against management.
15. Punishing or making up new rules for all for the mis-steps of individuals.  This is where management finds a few rule breakers and then berates the entire staff meetings rather than dealing directly with the violators. Discipline needs to be fair and it is a mistake to leave the situation as a general punishment while the innocent wonder who broke the rules. This too engenders resentment against management.
16. Being openly distrustful. This occurs when management treats everyone as if they are all untrustworthy – watching them, tracking them, warning them for every slight error – because a few times, a couple of workers were unreliable.
17. Failing to timely respond to observed conditions. When management fails to address behavior and actions of those whose actions or performance are inconsistent with stated company expectations/policies, resentment is going to be the result. This sometimes is occurs when management lets non-conformance continue until it is out of patience and then ambushes the next offender with open discipline. Resentment is sure to follow from such inconsistent treatment!
18. Ignoring good performance and raises. This takes place when employees find that they must repeatedly ask for routine raises when they have performed their jobs satisfactorily and do not get regular reviews. Resentment and negativity which this causes will become a swamp of unspoken hostility.

It’s Easy to Avoid Employee Negativity and Resentment from these 18 Sources!!