Employees with a Bad Attitude

By Deborah O’Connor

We’ve all encountered a difficult employee. It is the one that always causes problems, questions every minute detail, and in general is disruptive to the company. Dealing with difficult employees can present problems and ignoring a problematic employee could jeopardize the success of the entire organization. Difficult and uncooperative employees cost companies millions of dollars and untold misery every year. They undermine the success of businesses and cause loss of productivity, poor morale, and peace of mind.

Difficult people are easy to recognize; they show up late, leave early, don’t turn their work in on time and have an excuse for everything. They ask too many self-explanatory questions, neglect details, distract you and repeatedly challenge you and others. When they interact with customers, vendors, and salespeople, they can be grumpy, impolite, uninformed, misleading, inappropriate or simply wrong. Unfortunately, we all know someone like this. No one wants to work with difficult people, as productivity decreases, frustrations rise, morale goes down and customers and vendors get upset.

How do we handle these people? You cannot ignore the problem. They aren’t going away, and if the employee has redeeming qualities and adds some value to the company, there are ways to deal with them. The first instinct is to ignore them and hope things will improve. This isn’t a realistic solution, and by doing nothing things can progress from bad to worse. Intervening as soon as possible is the best way to tackle the problem. Take action as soon as you see signs of a problem. Oftentimes the employee has no idea that their behavior is a problem or that others are reacting negatively. Some employees just consider it a job frustration. Everyone wants to be liked by colleagues and are reluctant to speak up when a problem arises. It is the manager’s responsibility to take the appropriate action to correct the problem. Whether the cause is lack of knowledge of the issue, lack of feedback or projecting the difficulty onto someone else, the manager has the responsibility of addressing and turning around the predicament. He or she needs to gather information from employees and personally observe the employee interacting with customers or vendors. Armed with data and examples, the manager needs to address the issue. They also need to allow the employee to respond to the allegations. Once the employee begins to understand that these negative behaviors are real and experienced by others in the organization, human resources should begin to coach the difficult employee in displaying more acceptable and appropriate behaviors. If the employee continues to deny his inappropriate behavior and refuses to try to improve the situation, termination may be necessary.

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Deborah O’Connor is a social strategist and founder and president of Successful Image LLC with offices in Columbia and Atlanta. She offers training and seminars on image management, workplace etiquette, and social skills necessary to succeed in life professionally and personally. Contact at:  [email protected]       www.successfulimage.biz