Can’t We All Get Along?: Managing Office Cliques

It’s lunchtime or afternoon break: you head over to the pantry and you see several small groups of your colleagues clumping together in their own little space, chatting about the fun stuff they did over the weekend.

You listen in on the conversations and wonder if you should join in or feel like you’re stepping into ‘secret’ territories, or what is commonly called “office cliques.”

A study by Career Builder finds that 43 percent of full-time private-sector employees in the US say their office is populated by cliques and that it has been affecting workplace culture and their career development negatively.  

Reluctant Adaptive Behavior

It’s common to find employees adapting new behaviors they don’t really want to do, have no interest in, or feel uncomfortable with just to fit into office dynamics. 20 percent find themselves admitting that they’ve done something such as:

• • Watching a certain TV show or movie to discuss the next day (21 percent),
• • Pretending not to like someone or making fun of someone (19 percent),
• • Pretending to like a certain food (17 percent),
• • Taking smoke breaks (9 percent),
• • Hiding political affiliation (15 percent),
• • Not revealing personal hobbies (10 percent),
• • Keeping religious affiliations and beliefs a secret (9 percent).

Solution: Self-reflection

Reflect inwardly from time to time and try to notice if you’ve acquired an office alter ego or if you’ve been presenting two different personas at work and at home. If you can relate to this, then it’s a sure sign you should be re-evaluating your relationship with your work circle.

Exclusive Nature, Being Branded the Same as Your Clique’s Image   

Engaging in gossip, bullying, backstabbing, ostracizing other employees they don’t like, only wanting to hang out with members of the clique, and requiring conformity are just some of the common things office cliques do. When it gets really bad they won’t even know they’ve demoralized someone enough for them to leave altogether.

Whatever the image your clique projects— fashionable slackers, cool bullies, chatterbox, the life of the party, among others— will be put upon you as well, whether or not you actually embody these attributes. This can potentially damage your career development when both good and bad things happen in the company.

Solution: Analysis and Variety

Analyze if you’re in a clique— if you are in a group of friends at work but you’re afraid to speak out about a specific behavior because you don’t want to go against the collective opinion, you might want to rethink your friends at work.

Then, think about bringing variety into your work relationships. Broaden your horizons by spending more time with different people who build you up to slowly lessen your clique involvement and eventually make way for a sensible departure. Allow yourself to develop new interests.

Office Politics, Bosses in Cliques

Even supervisors and the upper management are at times part of cliques, intentionally or not, that can fuel office politics—favoritism, power trips, forcing homogeneity, or driving a small pack of brown-nosers.

Coworkers in a clique meanwhile will tend to cover for another member’s faults and duties, reinforce only each other’s opinions, and fail to take account of non-clique members’ ideas, which leads to subpar output and ineffective teamwork.

Solution: Setting an Example and Clear Enforcement of Policies  

It’s troublesome for the management when one of its executives is part of a clan as the right behavior, atmosphere, and cultural tone should start from here. If you are part of management, you must show transparency, inclusion, and open dialogue in meetings to gain their employees’ trust and fuel their ideas.

You must be a good listener and show them you value their opinion even when you may have to disagree. Promote healthy competition and collaboration while rewarding individuality, innovation, and authenticity.

You should also have clear policies set about digital etiquette to avoid cyberbullying, guidelines on how to report harassment issues, and develop mentoring programs in HR, investigate employee complaints thoroughly, use standard performance review procedures, and require tangible evidence to support a promotion or pay raise.

Create interactivity—team lunch or after hours occasionally but don’t make participation mandatory. Celebrate everyone’s success and don’t just praise a few.

And while being part of a clique may seem fun, provides a safety net, even advantageous connections—most especially for the socially conscious generation of millennials— there’s absolutely no rule that you should be part of one to ensure your happiness and place at work.

 

The post Can’t We All Get Along?: Managing Office Cliques appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/managing-cliques/

Julie — On Her Passion for Payroll and Her Team

Julie is Sprout Solutions’ Head of Payroll Professional Services. On this Sprout’s Rockstar of the Month, she speaks about how she found herself in payroll and managing her team.

 

Seeking Education, Trying Sales, Finding Payroll

“I took up BS Clinical Psychology in college because I wanted to be a teacher. After I graduated, I went into my first job as an HR assistant and on weekends, I was taking my masters for psychology.

The company I worked for was in the HR and payroll industry. Though I worked in HR I would often join events and it was then the marketing manager in my office asked me to be a part of the sales and marketing team. She said she saw my potential to be a salesperson, so I ended up working two positions: in HR and sales. I took up all responsibilities that came with being in sales and beyond— I was handling implementation as well.  

After a few years of that, I was promoted to operations as a manager, which entailed the outsourcing services of the company and software implementations. This position is where I started learning about the accounting, financial and payroll side of the industry.”

The Turning Point

“There was a situation in my job that I really had to learn payroll in depth; one of the supervisors had made a mistake in the computations and ended up paying the wrong amount to one of our clients’ employees. During that time I was on vacation but I needed to step in and resolve the issue. It was then I realized I enjoyed payroll.

At that point, I had been doing payroll since 2010, so I decided it was time to take my knowledge and venture to a new environment. I enjoy the challenges of payroll, especially in the year-end, like annualization. It could be a repetitive task but every now and then you have to check new rulings or policies and that’s when it gets exciting. So when I was looking for new work, I searched within the payroll industry and that’s where I found Sprout and joined their payroll outsourcing team as head manager.”  

On Managing a Team

“I believe that my background in clinical psychology helped me prepare for the client-facing position of payroll outsourcing. It teaches you how to understand the human psyche so it helps me be a keen observer and patient listener when I communicate with clients as well as my employees.

On top of my educational background, I also learned a lot from my manager from my past job. When I started in sales, she taught me how to present myself to clients, most especially in negotiation. By urging me to try out sales from an HR position, she took me out of my comfort zone, and it was then I gained more confidence in myself and in handling a team.”

Managing Style

“I am very maternal… People often look to me for advice. So when I first took on a managerial role, it wasn’t hard for me to adjust to having people work under me.

I believe that my team is my responsibility, so it is in my instinct to take care of them. But that doesn’t mean that I baby them either: I always tell my team that I will not be the micromanaging type because I trust that they will do their jobs. I expect my team to manage themselves and they will only hear from me when they are not meeting my expectations. However, if they need help from me, they can always approach me.”

When building my team, I value willingness to learn over skills. One of my greatest peeves is someone with an attitude problem; I would much rather handle someone that doesn’t hold that much experience but is open to learning than someone with a higher skillset but refuses to new ideas.”

Outside of Payroll and Future Plans

“Outside of payroll, I enjoy crafting. I make accessories and do hand stamping whenever I’m free. These are the activities I like to do to de-stress.

I was recently thinking about enrolling myself for a masters degree. When I used to want to be a preschool teacher I took school psychology for masters, but now that I’ve found payroll I want to further my learning again.”

 

The post Julie — On Her Passion for Payroll and Her Team appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/julie-rockstar-of-the-month/