I’m sure you have witness someone climb up the corporate ladder in some point of your career. You thought to yourself that this person does not put in extra hours, has zero knowledge so how did the progression come about? You start discussing about this with your close colleagues, and discussions slowly become gossips.
We know gossips are fun, but this hurts productivity at workplace so how do we minimize workplace politics?
Be Transparent and encourage two-way communication
Management has to be transparent and encourage open communication between employees and the management. Rather than let your employees discuss about was the person should get the promotion, management should provide a strong justification of why the person was selected.
Through having a two-way communication would also allow management to have first-hand knowledge about what employees are discussing and can stop it when discussions become gossips.
Communicate and Evaluate employees on goals established for them
Communicating the goals is more important than evaluating employees on the goals established for them. This will result in fairness, where goals are communicated so employees are aware of how their performance are being accessed in a way whereby they are able to earn the promotion. This would then help management provide a stronger justification of the recent promotion.
Communicating and evaluating goals would allow employees to feel that their contribution matters. With a stronger direction, this would actively increase engagement and morale between employees. To facilitate all these, you should also have a robust system to track your employees.
Focus on your recruitment
You would want to ensure you are bringing in the right talents to the company to achieve aligned goals between the individual and the employer. No matter how much you try to prevent office politics through changing your company’s culture - a fishmonger would always be a fishmonger...
and at CVista HR, we can help to filter fishmongers out from your pool of suitable candidates for your consideration!