Are you disturbed by the hostile environment of your workplace? This is quite annoying when your subordinates tend to go beyond the set of disciplinary rules. Whether small or big organizational setup, disruptive behavior of the employees drains productivity and makes it difficult to work. To ensure enhanced business performance and a healthy work environment you need to analyze the performance of problematic employees. Give them timely feedback and monitor their performance. At times you may need to fire them in case you don’t observe any progress.
Here in this article, we will discuss more on this. Besides, we will provide you with important tips to deal with such critical situations.
10 ways to deal with difficult employees
Once you set up your business or your organization, besides external issues you might face certain internal problems as well. Addressing employee behavioral issues might seem stressful and awkward sometimes. This in turn hampers your work environment and demotivates the morale of other employees.
To destress you from such complicated circumstances, we have listed 10 ways to solve this problem. Let’s check it out.
1. Critique behavior and the people
You must deal with the issue rather than being unnecessarily personal or emotional. Try and understand the problems behind such inappropriate conduct. Analyze the root cause and go for a friendly discussion with them to avoid any misunderstanding.
2. Listen to their feedbacks
Go for a two-way conversation and understand their problem. Listening to their issues might help you to have a clear insight into the situation. On the other hand, it would help the employee to bring about a change in his/ her code of conduct.
3. Make your instructions clear
Giving feedback about inappropriate behavior may seem difficult. But to maintain a healthy work environment give very clear and direct instruction to the disturbing employees. Give them examples to understand where they are going wrong and what improvement do they need for better work performance.
4. Document employee performance
You must document the instances when you witness poor performance or troubling behavior. This would help you to refer to the specific event. So that in the worst scenario you can apply these documents to protect your company from the allegation of wrongful termination.
5. Consult the HR department
Consult your HR department and schedule a meeting with them to discuss such critical situations. HR would analyze the company policies and would suggest the necessary steps that to be taken against the undisciplined employees. In some cases, if the termination is required HR will help you to deal with the employees such that your company doesn’t get into any complications.
6. Work together to get a suitable solution
Working together to get a solution would be helpful. Sit and talk with your employee and come to a mutual term as a solution to this issue. Understand what your employee expects from you or the management and let him/her understand what the company expects from them.
7. Detail your expectation
Written documentation is always an effective way to get rid of these disturbing situations. Write down your detailed expectations and set a timeframe for evaluation. Get it signed by the employee and keep a copy of this signed document with you and give away another to the employee. This would help you to take the necessary steps while evaluating their performance.
8. Set specific consequences to the employees
At times you may find that verbal warning or friendly discussion might not help to improve the situation. Set out specific consequences so that employees improve their behavioral and work performance in the fear of serious implications. You can give a written warning, restrict promotions, incentives, and other additional perks. You can even go for the termination in the worst cases.
9. Monitor the progress
Monitoring their performance and progress is important. Give them a timeframe for corrections and in the meantime analyze their behavior and work performance. Once the time is over go for evaluation and take corrective actions if required in case of no progress.
10. Figure hopeless situation
Even after taking the above-mentioned actions, at times you might face a scenario where the employee is unwilling to change. In such cases where your company’s productivity is at stake and the work environment is getting disturbed opt for the company’s termination procedures to cut down further losses.
How to deal with insubordinate and disruptive employees
Insubordinate employees kill productivity and disrupt the workplace environment. The manager or the person concerned needs to go for a face-to-face discussion with the employee to sort out the situation. If that doesn’t work do not head straight to the termination procedure, there are other ways you can try out.
- Separate the disruptive employee from the other but encourage him/her to work from home.
- Re-arrange their work desk and keep them at a distance from others.
- Reassign them with different projects to remove them from other team members.
- Lastly, go for fewer team meetings until a certain period.
Discussing behavioral and performance issues is not an easy task. You might face various unexpected situations where it becomes awkward for you to deal with them. To help you out from such critical circumstances we have discussed various points in this article. Try out the suitable one that fits your situation and get rid of such a toxic work environment.
