How to Reduce Office Micromanagement

What are ways to reduce office micromanagement?

1. Encourage communication
2. Remind employees once in a while
3. Prioritize understanding versus compliance
4. Set successful parameters

Micromanagement refers to a managing style that is too obsessed with details and control. An office with a micromanagement culture will have leaders who point out every mistake of their employee and will not allow their teams to form their own opinions. Leaders act like control freaks because they are scared of having a tarnished reputation, obsessed with rightness at all times, and are too afraid of mistakes.

In a virtual office in the Philippines, it is easier to prevent leaders from acting like micromanagers because everyone will see their harmful actions and call them out on it. It is possible because the office was designed to be an open space. Everyone is meant to be equals who can approach each other anytime. Despite the nice design, there is still the risk of people become micromanagers. Therefore, every employee should know these tips that can reduce office micromanagement, in case it does happen.

Encourage communication

Communication between manager and employee can be a tricky one to do right. The reason why communication can be ruined because leaders always make these mistakes:

• They act unapproachable
• Whenever leaders talk to people under their team, they usually focus only on mistakes
• They don’t seem to care about the job aspirations of their employees

When you, as a leader, do this all the time, your employees become hesitant to talk to you about important issues. This can lead to a lot of company trouble later on.

Remind employees once in a while

It is ok to remind your employees about the outputs they forgot to do or haven’t finished once in a while. But if you have to take time to remind them every day in an office space for lease in Las Pinas, then this type of management has become a problem. Yes, you don’t want your department to make mistakes as much as possible. But being overly attentive can paradoxically lower their morale and make them lose motivation to do work properly, which dampens overall productivity.

So the only answer to prevent productivity problems from happening is reminding them once in a while. If you have difficulty implementing this action in real life, these tips can help:

Consistently set expectations early

Whenever there is a new project, you should first have a meeting with all the team members. Besides clarifying the gist of it, you should state clearly the roles of each employee in this project.

Afterward, you make them remember their individual expectations:

• By making a report and sending it online.
• Write little notes. You can use sticky paper or if you have glass walls, like virtual offices in the Philippines, you use them as a board and list the reminders using a whiteboard marker.

When expectations are clarified early, employees will work exactly according to what they need without being suffocated.

Let go of “I’ll do everything myself” thoughts

Leaders who are prone to these type of thoughts usually do not trust their members and assume that they are better than everyone else. Additionally, they are used to making things go their way automatically.

Doing work besides your own is very inefficient. When things are inefficient, the office ends up finishing output too late.

Therefore, it is important to let go of these thoughts. If you see employees making a mistake, do not take their work. Instead, clarify what they did wrong. Afterward, you can suggest what they should do fix their wrong and then leave them to implement your suggestion.

Prioritize understanding versus compliance

There will definitely be times where employees have no choice but to listen to you as a leader. For example, your budget manager has no choice but to pay the rental fee for the company’s office space for lease in Las Pinas. If she doesn’t, you may not have a space to work in.

But forcing them to comply with every decision you make is just tyranny. Before you discuss your plan to the team, already list reasons why you want to push through it and be prepared with sample explanations to answer the employees who may oppose your plan. When you do this, you can also ask the reasons your teammate objected to you. Afterward, employees can give suggestions that are potentially helpful

Set successful parameters

As the name suggests, these parameters are meant to measure how successful your employees are at doing their jobs. Instead of you judging how good or bad your employee, you can set a sort of grading system. For example, you can tell your teammates that they all have a quota of 4 outputs per day. Whenever they do, you can confidently say they did a good job.

Key Takeaway

Micromanagers are the way they are because of reasons such as being afraid for their reputation. No matter how much an office aims to be open in design, leaders like these can still exist. Therefore, employees should know about these tips that can reduce office micromanagement.