While not every aspect of any job is fun, some tasks are downright loathsome in the eyes of certain employees. Even if the work is necessary, requiring team members to spend a significant amount of their day on duties that are mundane, repetitive, or not engaging can be incredibly damaging to morale.

Over time, a negative impact on productivity usually occurs, and individual employee performance may suffer. While the tasks themselves may be necessary for operations, how you handle them as a manager can play a big role in how they are viewed by your staff. Here are a few activities your employees likely despise doing, and what you can do to make them more manageable.

Frequent Unannounced Meetings

Meetings can be a critical part of keeping a business moving forward. However, if the meetings are taking up too much of their time each day, particularly when they aren’t scheduled in advance, they are usually more of a source of frustration than anything else.

Unannounced meetings usually require workers to drop what they are doing immediately, interrupting their current thought process and harming overall productivity. Then, if the meeting itself isn’t productive (or wasn’t even necessary), the interruption can breed a sense of resentment, damaging morale.

Ideally, all meetings should be scheduled well in advance and during a time that works best for your team. That way, you won’t interfere with detail-oriented work when they are in the middle of the task, as they can plan to be available at the designated time.

Constant Detailed Reporting

Creating a detailed report by hand is a cumbersome process. While management may want to stay informed on a project’s progress, productivity suffers if your team has to stop actively working on that assignment to create a report and deliver it.

Often, the worker’s time would be better spent on the project itself than on reporting. If having access to that information is necessary, implement a technology that can simplify the process or look for a fully automated solution that can run on a set schedule, eliminating this duty from your employee’s plate entirely.

Regular Mandatory Overtime

Often, mandatory overtime is a burden, not a blessing. While the occasional need for extra hours will likely be tolerated, constantly forcing your employees to spend additional hours at work disrupts their work-life balance, especially if the need to stay is announced at the last minute.

Additionally, not only will they feel overworked (and potentially burn out), they will quickly question whether management is using them to avoid hiring new workers. This can breed resentment and distrust, and may lead them to wonder whether the leadership team is competent in regards to workforce management.

Ultimately, the three tasks above are primarily hated by employees in every industry. By learning to limit the need for them, you can create a more positive and productive environment, ensuring everyone is achieving a higher level of job satisfaction.

If you would like to learn more or are looking to expand your team, the professionals at CPS Recruitment can help. Contact us to speak with a member of our knowledgeable staff today and see how our workforce management expertise can benefit you.