If you have incorporated the age-hold corporate hierarchy in your present-day business, you might be causing more damage to your business than you realize. Businesses and business management have evolved over time and so have the employees that you have hired. Gone are the days, when you could suppress employees based on your corporate authority, just because you could. People these days are more qualified and aware of their rights.
Moreover, by maintaining a rigid corporate hierarchy, you also unknowingly miss out on significant prospects of innovation and growth. On the other hand, if your business allows a certain degree of freedom for every designation, it would be bubbling and flourishing with new ideas and business strategies. Explained below are few ways corporate hierarchy is undesirable in a business organization.
1. Lesser co-operation
If the top management people in the hierarchical ladder distance themselves from the rest of the employees, there are high chances of building an invisible wall between the two groups. Employees subconsciously start being on the “against” side of the group of any debate instead of being on the “for” side.
Wiser business honchos like to be in the crowd rather than staying locked up in a cabin!
2. Suppressed leadership:
There might be a lot of excellent leaders in your team of employees, whose talent will remain untapped if you choose to enforce corporate hierarchy in your organization. Sometimes, those nascent ideas are all you need to extract to get your business out of a tough crisis. However, corporate leadership only delegates leadership to certain personnel and everyone else is un-welcome to put forward their ideas.
Instead, your organization should encourage everyone to come forward and present their ideas when the situation demands.
3. Communication gap:
This is another dangerous implication of corporate hierarchy that is commonly observed. Management teams of corporate organizations fail to maintain business transparency and continue to keep their employees ignorant of important business strategies. The management needs to understand that it is the front line employees who have more knowledge about the day-to-day operations than their bosses.
If the communication gap is bridged, then a lot of business problems could be solved in easier ways.
4. Back-seat driving:
Corporate hierarchy encourages leading from behind. Managers feel comfortable behind their desks and ordering their subordinates. This mythical management is not at all ideal since one must be among their team members to be a better leader. Only when you walk your team through (literally) will they better understand your commandments. Also, in this process, as a manager, you can also learn things from your subordinates.
Managers who do field-work with their team, prove to be more successful than the ones who take their hierarchy in an egoistic way.
5. Increased attrition rate:
In a business organization, where corporate hierarchy limits personal growth for employees, higher job attrition rate is seen. This is because employees remain unsatisfied due to the corporate hierarchy of the organization. You might lose your most dynamic employee sooner than you had imagined, thanks to the hierarchy system of your company.
Keeping the employees of your organization satisfied has a big role in a company`s success.