Top Tips - Attitude

Top Tip - Attitude

 

 

Do you have employees that display any of the following traits?

·         Laziness

·         Tardiness

·         Spread rumours / office gossip

·         Rude or disrespectful to you or others

·         Disengaged with everything at work

·         Always see the negative and complain and moan

 

Bad attitude can cause poor performance in the employee and others around them, give you unhappy customers and is infectious.

If you recognise the above in your employees then how do you handle these situations, in fact I am often asked ‘Can you deal with these issues at all?’

The simple answer is of course, however often the root cause of a poor attitude at work is not work itself and so perhaps follow some of the steps below to turn around a bad attitude to be your most positive employee!

·         Speak informally with the employee and simply ask if there is a problem either at home or at work that is causing them distress as you have noticed they seem particularly negative at the moment – Be prepared to listen!

·         Take a look in the mirror, are you imposing unrealistic deadlines, high level of changes which create uncertainty, needing high levels of overtime consistently? If so then the answer may be closer to home in making your team feel appreciated and being realistic so you are not setting them up to fail.

·         If there are problem at home how can you support them through these? Can you allow some time off, a change to working hours etc…

·         If there appear to be no underlying reasons then warn the employee you won't tolerate negative influences in your business and if this continues you will take a more formal course of action.

There is a great article on how to have these conversations at http://smallbusiness.chron.com/conversation-employees-attitude-24320.html

I am often asked to deal with attitude issues as for business owners these are sometimes difficult conversations to have without the course of the conversation appearing personal to the employee. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance on matters like this rather than leaving a disruptive employees to wreak havoc on your business.

For guidance on this subject or any other employee related matter call us on 0844 8797286.