Issue link: http://psai.uberflip.com/i/1181388
W EEKLY EDITION NOVEMBER 6, 2019 J er ks At Wor k - An d Ho w T o De a l W ith T he m By Karleen Kos, PSAI Executive Director • Make people unhappy at work and thereby cause stress and increase absenteeism • Reduce the motivation of those around them • Create more jerks – because jerkism (jerkishness? jerkicity?) can be contagious • Inhibit teamwork and team spirit • Harm productivity for all of the above reasons Let's state it clearly in a language business owners understand: Je r ks ar e bad f o r t h e bo t t om li n e . When company leaders realize this and act on it they're on their way to a better culture and a better bottom line. 3 : We e d in g o u t j er ks All of this is well and good as far as hiring new people. But what can be done if you already have an employee who is a jerk? And worse, what can you do if the jerk is not a mere employee but someone who supervises others or represents your company to the public? Kjerulf observes how interesting it is that while jerks are sometimes tolerated as employees , they can be appreciated or even celebrated as managers. This is a mistake. Jerk employees are bad enough but jerk leaders are an even bigger problem because they can create even more havoc and make even more people unhappy. The best and most radical ant i - jerk - manager - approach around comes from Semco, a Sao Paulo, Brazil - based company with 3000 employees operating in a variety of markets. Semco has introduced a set of practices that taken together virtually eliminate jerks among leaders. First of all, emp loyees themselves choose who to hire as their manager. Yes that's right, the employees themselves conduct the job interviews and decide who gets the job. That keeps most jerks out. But what about jerks who still somehow manage to get into a leadership pos ition at Semco? Well, that's where they have three simple practices that eliminate that problem – and many others besides it. Here's what they do: P AGE 15 CONTINUED ON PAGE 1 6