Attitude Adjustment: Keep Problem Employees from Dragging Down the Team

Every office seems to have at least one – somebody who chronically drags down the morale and work of the rest of the team. But even if they are common, such toxic employees need not be a fact of life forever.

It is tempting – and easy – for managers to hit the mental ignore button and just learn to live with difficult team members. But, experts say, managers who take the head-in-the-sand approach to dealing with difficult employees end up making the problem worse. It won't go away on its own.

So what does a manager do to stop misbehaving employees from spreading their negative influence? That depends on the behavior, says Margaret Morford, author and president of The HR Edge Inc., a management consulting and training company based in Brentwood, Tenn. But the important thing is to take action.

“So often, problem employees get away with small bits of behavior that their managers ignore, that they don't speak to them about, to the point that it gets to be a full-blown problem,” Morford said. “I always tell managers that bad behavior doesn't heal itself. So they need to be proactive. It's better to be proactive when the behavior starts rather than wait to the point where it escalates and becomes a real issue.”

Not addressing employee behavioral problems also can create other issues for managers, Morford said. For starters, people begin to assume the bad behavior is standard. Second, people often lose respect for a manager who doesn't address problems. “Don't ever be naïve and think that employees aren't watching what's going on all the time.”

Managers also need to learn how to distinguish bad behavior from bad employees, Morford said. Many times, bad behavior is linked to an employee's level of engagement.

There is a telling study that author Marcus Buckingham cites about employee engagement levels in the workplace, she said. Based on the findings, 19 percent of employees are disengaged, unhappy, and spreading their discontent to coworkers. Fifty-five percent of employees are showing up, but despite doing the job they've been asked to do, they're disengaged. The remaining 26 percent are fully engaged, loyal, productive employees.

While employees in the 55 percent category may simply need to be re-engaged and re-motivated, those who fall in the 19 percent range are problematic “because they really do spread their discontent to everybody,” Morford said. “The problem is that they do incredible damage.”

Obviously, it's best to screen out problem employees before they start working for you, experts say.

Aside from screening job candidates more carefully, managers might find it helpful to include other team members in the interviewing process or have the candidate participate in some kind of trial to find out how they might perform on the job, said Gini Graham Scott, author of “A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners Slackers, and Other Workplace Demons.”

Of course, it's not always possible to catch every problem employee at the gate. So if some misbehaving employees have managed to slip through the interviewing process at your company, here's some advice on how to handle some of the more common types in your workplace:

• Complainer: The best way to deal with these types is to put them in charge of the solution, Morford said. If confronted by a complainer, a manager should say: “What is your suggestion, or what do you think we ought to do about it?” Sometimes complainers will stop kvetching if they realize that they'll have to take responsibility for the solution.
• Passive-aggressive: Passive-aggressive people often slow down or won't do as much work. Or sometimes, they'll continue asking the same question over and over, Morford said. Give people the benefit of the doubt if they ask a question the first time after receiving information. If someone asks a second time, assume that you might not have been clear enough. If someone asks a third time, you might have a passive-aggressive on your hands. Make eye contact and say something like: You've asked me the same question two other times, so I have to assume that you just don't like the answer I've given you. While waiting for a response, continue to make eye contact. If the passive-aggressive is slow in getting work done, ask that person why he or she is having problems completing work on time or producing as much as in the past. Explain that employees are expected to hit deadlines, and that they are to tell you well in advance if they are going to be late. “Put the responsibility back on them.”
• Slacker: This employee is easygoing to the point of no production. The remedy? If you're the manager of a slacker, you need to set very clear, specific goals, Morford said. For example, if employees have to write a certain number of proposals within a given timeframe, tell them how many they are expected to write per day – and by what time they should notify you if it appears that they are not going to hit that number.”
• Chronically tardy: This employee pushes the limit when it comes to getting to work on time. There are a number of ways to remedy this problem, Morford said. For example, a manager had an employee who ran late every day because she had to drop her child off at school. The manager agreed to move the employee's start time an hour later to 9 a.m., but said that the later start would mean that she would have to stay at work until 7 p.m. The employee was no longer late. In another instance, a telemarketing manager had an employee who consistently showed up 15 minutes late every day, she said. So the manager started sitting at the employee's desk at every day at 8 a.m., answered his phone, and passed on all the employee's leads to other salespeople until he arrived at the office. After three days, the tardiness issue was resolved.
• Sympathy junkie: Here's the employee who spends a lot of water cooler and cube time talking about personal problems. But such employees are not interested in solutions because they enjoy the attention. In this case, the manager needs to talk to the employee privately and say something like this: It sounds like you've got a lot going on. I'm not a professional, but it sounds like you might need to see a professional stress counselor, Morford said. Provide the employee with the phone number for the company's employee assistance program (EAP). If the problem resurfaces, ask the employee if he or she has followed through with the call to the EAP. Most often, the answer will be “no.” Then encourage the employee to contact the EAP, emphasizing that you are not a counselor.
• Change-resister: This employee is the foot-dragger when it comes to change in the workplace. To help remedy the problem, put such people charge of moving the change or initiative forward, Morford said. If you're dealing with older employees, emphasize how much they have contributed to the business, that change is inevitable, and that if they choose to resist the change, they will be considered a dinosaur. The message you want to convey is this: change and stay on board, or stay the same and get left behind. Sometimes it's effective to put these employees in a teaching role so that they have to get on board to train others.
• Overbearing one: Here's the employee who may be very adept at achieving results, but who might be lacking in people skills. “They get the work done, but there's a body count behind them,” Morford said. Put these employees in charge of a project, but explain that you're looking for a successful outcome as well as a positive report from those working with them on the project. Explain that you're giving them a chance to develop their people skills. Tell them that you'll be talking to all the colleagues they worked with to find out if their coworkers would willingly work with them on future projects.

Regardless of the type of problem that needs to be addressed, managers need to make sure that they confront the employee and that they are very specific about the kind of behavior that is causing the problem, Morford said. For example, it's not as effective to sit down with employees to discuss their negative attitudes as it is to talk about how they sat in a staff meeting and rolled their eyes – or swore and slammed the phone down after talking to a customer. It's also more difficult for an employee to deny their bad behavior if a manager provides specific examples.

After the meeting, follow up in writing to reiterate what was discussed, she said. Seeing the issue spelled out in writing makes it more real for the employee and also sends the signal that they can no longer get away with the behavior.

And if confronting bad behavior doesn't resolve the problem, managers ultimately have to ask themselves whether the business can afford to have someone on board who isn't meeting standards, Scott said.

“People have to know that their performance is linked to doing their job,” she said. “The whole ship could go down if you have a bunch people not performing.”

Written by Jenny Cromie, certified human resources specialist (CHRS)