Source: Benefitspro.com
When workplace annoyances hit, it makes the life of employees much harder, and often employees find themselves struggling to complete their work, says Carol Fitzgibbons, an HR expert at BPI Group, a global management and human resources consulting firm in Chicago.
Some of these workplace annoyances include slow decision-making decisions, unproductive processes and an endless stream of inefficient emails. While these annoyances might seem minor to an employer, they can build up overtime and cause employees begin to feel disengaged, Fitzgibbons says.
“The amount of effort an employee puts in and the amount they can actually get done because of these annoyances starts to get out of balance,” Fitzgibbons says. “The annoyances that exist in the organization just become bigger, and it starts to affect the employees’ desire to want to be there and be excited about things happening in the organization.”
Millennials are especially susceptible to workplace annoyances, Fitzgibbons says. In today’s workplace, millennials are looking to make an immediate impact on their organizations, but when these annoyances get in the way, it becomes much more difficult to stay on top of the more meaningful tasks.
“When you have so much coming at you that you can’t think or when it’s just so hard to get tasks done in an organizations, it’s very hard as an individual to feel like you’re having an impact and your work is making a difference,” Fitzgibbons says. “You have so much coming at you that you just can’t prioritize and don’t have time for any of your own personal development.”
Many millennials are also frustrated by workplace annoyances because they are new to the environment, Fitzgibbons says. For millennials, they haven’t been around long enough to understand that there is often a long corporate history of certain policies, processes and procedures, and changing these can be timely and costly.
“Millennials look at the processes and say that it shouldn’t be this hard,” Fitzgibbons says. “It’s hard to understand and appreciate that when you’re newer to the environment.”
However, a manager can take a millennial’s annoyance as a chance to examine the company’s situation with a fresh set of eyes, Fitzgibbons says. While fixing some annoyances might be out of the budget, such as implementing a new, more efficient IT system, a manager can look at ways to improve how various departments work together or what can be done to better the decision-making process.
“Managers need to set up an environment that allows employees to get their work done,” Fitzgibbons says. “They need to make sure that they’re providing employees with the information they need to be able to get their jobs done effectively and have an impact. It might be hard for the new person to come in and influence the processes, but managers can help them figure out how to manage these.”