Are Filipino employees overmanaged and underled?

This is the biggest question and even challenge that business owners and their HR managers are asking today as we all attend the 60th National Convention of the Philippines of PMAP or the People Management Association of the Philippines. There are about 1,500 of us and we are all gathered in the Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, Cebu City. Governor Gwen F. Garcia will welcome all the delegates from all over the country and from abroad.

The secretary of Labor will also be one of the speakers. There is a long line of speakers and resource persons. Tomorrow, I shall discuss the topic on The Philippine Laws on Sexual Harassment and Safe Spaces: What to Do with Employees' Workplace Loves, Romances, Sex and Immorality? PMAP will also welcome the delegations from more than 20 chapters from all over the land. In Visayas, the chapters are led by Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Oriental, Negros Occidental, Iloilo, and Leyte. Mindanao will be led by Davao and Cagayan de Oro together with Iligan, Misamis Occidental, Bukidnon, Caraga, Zamboanga and Gensan. Luzon will be led by Calabarzon, Pampanga, Bulacan, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, Ilocos, Baguio, and La Union with Bicol.

The question of over-managing people is focused on the thesis that managers tend to overdo planning, organizing, and controlling and to do less of leading. That means that employees, especially those of the Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z, are often complaining that business owners and their executives who mostly belong to the Baby Boomers, tend to micromanage their subordinates. The employees are not given autonomy to innovate and experiment. The management is too focused on finding faults and catching employees doing something bad. These old-timers do not understand that the young want to be left alone to produce results based on their own innovative techniques. The younger generations just want to be given broad goals and general targets. They want to achieve results using their own techniques.

There is always tension in the workplaces because most managers are Theory X in their leadership styles. They want to dictate both the goals and the procedures, reasoning that quality of results can be achieved only when there is uncompromising adherence to the minutest protocols and processes. The challenge of HR is how to become a bridge between the Theory X managers on the one hand and the Theories Y and Z among the rank-and-file. This Convention Curriculum and Program Content is designed to create solutions to these emerging tensions in the workplace. Young talents feel they are being squeezed by too-demanding autocrats and dictators in the offices and in the factories.

What is needed is less managing and more leading. More mentoring, more coaching, more counseling. The workplace should be transformed into a learning environment where supervisors and managers act as teachers, coaches, and mentors. They should motivate people and not harass or bully them. They should lead by example and display their superior skills and superior attitude and work habits. Managers and supervisors should catch their people doing something good, something commendable, and something to reward and praise. Managers and supervisors should stop acting like policemen and auditors. They should behave as older and bigger brothers who are teaching the young cope with the challenges of work. Indeed, superiors must act like shepherds, not predators and bullies.

I was the national president of PMAP in 2014. It was that year when I opened the borders for the ASEAN integration of all HR professionals in member nations Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Brunei. We have a lot to learn from each other. Asians too are overmanaged and underled. We all need to learn.