Employee letters and emails boardline abusive, I suspect it's worse due to my sex. So what's my next move?

[Femalearchaeopteryx]

I run my family manufacturing business its a male dominated industry and until recently no women had been in any roles except administration.

My Dad is semi retired but will never fully retire it's his lifes work. He has a very authoritative style and he's also tall so looks domineering as well.
I can be authoritative but I believe that a mix of leadership styles is best but I lean towards autocratic. I'm tallish but softly spoken and I look nice/kind so don't look scary (like most women really).

I came into the business having done leadership roles elsewhere. I quickly realised that it needed a massive overhaul as with many businesses that have grown bigger organically it had very little control, procedures or processes in place, there was & clearly still is a poor culture of petty bullying and blaming also an individual piece work bonus system that drove division rather than teamwork to get the product finished.

Luckily I managed to get us a huge government grant close to a million that is specifically for improving manufacturing via training/coaching/mentoring to help with improvements and change.

As part of the improvements we have an anonymous employee survey and suggestion box.

We have also just got rid of the bonus system with the new pay system everyone is earning more and their pay is more stable throughout the year.

Hopefully that has given you enough background.

So we have been getting letters from a group of employees that are increasingly aggressive and rude. Which started when we changed the pay system. Those we have people's signatures and after the last letter we will be discussing with each individual and launching an investigation as the letter overstepped, into abuse.

We have also been getting rude aggressive emails from our employee engagement I'm considering if I should publish extracts (obviously anonymised) in our employee newsletter and raise the abuse the leadership team have been receiving although I am not sure though if that just gives these kind of people more power.

Mostly of the 90 odd employees it will only be a few and I know who that are behaving in this way.

I am sure a lot of this is to do with my sex and a bit of a power play...put me in my place kind of thing...So I'd be interested to hear from other women what their response would be.

And before anyone complains I do know what I am doing and have lots of experience managing people, I'm just interested in other women's thoughts and insight as particularly MN are a knowledgeable and experienced lot.

@StartingAgain6369

When I had my business we had big problems with late teens early twenties staff not showing up on a Monday after a heavy weekend partying

I changed the employment contract to SSP from full pay, with full pay kicking in after a weeks illness subject to Drs note

Almighty kick off regarding the change which I countered by saying that's what you pay NI for, I'm sure you can guess what happened regarding Monday's going forward

I also brought in return to work forms/interviews for any absence

Your team leaders should be onto this

So you put your whole workforce at a serious financial disadvantage to deal with a few people taking the piss?

Sounds like a poor management style to me.

What about those people who are genuinely ill and will struggle with bills because SSP is so low?

Ppl resist change and some prove totally inflexible but it depends how important to the operation these people are. The “ nobody is irreplaceable “ isn’t always the case, certainly at the moment. My husband’s firm have been trying to recruit technical staff for over 12 months as the existing staff are pissed off with having to work two peoples jobs. The problem is compounded by revival companies looking too and he’s losing employees to the competition. It’s a difficult situation. However if you intend to sack these people then you need to have grounds to do so and be able to back it up in a tribunal. That is time consuming and messy. I’ve seen it go horribly wrong and it’s cost an awful lot of money in compensation not to mention reputational damage.

Book looks interesting, AbitofaLark, thanks!

@PandorasMailbox

Just one question OP.

Can I come and work for you?

Yes you can we'll rename the business MN Inc 😁 we'll specialise in feminist discussion 🦕 and have a rapid response parking team 🐧

Thanks for the info Abitof I'll look that up.

The leadership team and I are thinking overnight if we go for the hardline which could present us all with lots of extra unnecessary work or we go with the talking to all of them and putting a line in the sand that if it is crossed gets them straight to a disciplinary. It's clear from the things they have said that the old leadership have caused a lot of these problems for us and (rightly so for some of the things) this has left the workforce angry.

We also haven't been focusing enough on there but in fairness we've been doing a heck of a lot and aren't superhuman yet.

@Femalearchaeopteryx

Yes no one is losing everyone is gaining. We were very careful of that as actually do want to be fair. Whilst also getting rid of a unfair difficult to control system.

We have already written to every employee with the details and with the letter writing lot we have done so on more than one occasion plus offered individual meetings so they cod compare to their previous salary confidentially.

Sadly some of this is legacy from the culture I inherited.

Oh funnily one of the things they are being most abusive about is that me or the factory director are refusing to have a group meeting with them to discuss their grievances, (we've offered them other avenues to express these). I know exactly what would happen if we did, the ring leaders would use it to show their power and we'd have loads of grand standing.

Before I retired I had a similar issue. I did have the group meeting but as soon as the grandstanding started I took that person outside and asked them why they were behaving like that, asked for an example of what they complained about. They went back into the meeting and it was productive but it was a difficult meeting to manage.

One trick was someone raising issues that didn't affect them, claiming they were sorry for X which was great as I'd then ask X if they wanted the changes to be cancelled (I knew they had benefitted and mentioned the benefits for them) they backed me.

It was tiresome and I don't know if it would always work. Good luck.

It all sounds so very tedious!!

May the annoying underperformers be on their way soon..

I used to lead an all-male team, some of whom were the kind of difficult dinosaurs you're describing. I reorganised and made the troublemakers redundant - this was public sector where going through capability was impossible.

As others have said, making sure you have a clear 'expected behaviours' policy is vital, deal with transgressions through your disciplinary procedures if necessary.

You definitely do need to manage out the troublesome behaviour/people. One piece of advice I was given that it's possible to get rid of anyone, it just depends how much you want to spend.

You also need to consider reputation and what your actions do in terms of attracting the staff you want and need.

Good luck!

@stillonthattightrope

So you put your whole workforce at a serious financial disadvantage to deal with a few people taking the piss?

No you have got that the wrong way round the ones taking the piss are putting the whole of the workforce at risk, with them going on the piss at the weekend and not turning into work on Monday jeopardises the whole of the businesses and not only that it loads up extra stress onto the workforce who are trying to cover for the ones who have got absolutely pissed over the weekend and can't be bothered to come into work and think they can use sick pay as additional holiday

My management style over the years has given employees a comfortable lifestyle, it has given several disadvantage people a fresh start in the jobs market, it has given reassurance to lady leaving her husband that she will have an income

The ones who are genuinely ill got discretionary sick pay up to their normal wages

Haven’t RTFT but I’d separate the comments from the way they are phrased IIWY.

Sanitise the comments and tell people you’re looking at actions to take (without promising action on everything, in fact I’d make that clear, that you can’t promise action on everything).

Then separately address the conduct issues. I’d consider a dignity at work policy and remind everyone that it’s fine to give feedback but that being constructive is important. Make it clear that nobody should be expected to tolerate abuse.