“A workplace filled with and driven by employees and positive attitudes – vibrates continually to the tune of service excellence and passionate team success.” – Ty Howard
If the life-line of a company is its customers, then employees are the way to either keep this lifeline healthy or completely ‘kill’ it. For employees to function at their best, the workplace must be happy. The workplace comprises of a number of varied aspects, prime being co-workers. Some customers are difficult, but the interaction with them is manageable since it is not daily for many hours in the day that one deals with them. Dealing with difficult co-workers is a different ball game – they are there, day in and day out for many hours in the day. There is no choice but to interact with them but these difficult co-workers bring everyone down – lower the morale, hurt people’s self-esteem and make the workplace hell for the meeker and easy-going people. These difficult co-workers can be colleagues, supervisors, the top boss and even subordinates – they come in every ‘shape and size’. Whoever these people are, if the company chooses to ignore in the hope that the issues will sort themselves out, they will negatively impact the overall work environment leading to low productivity, disgruntled employees and over time high employee attrition.
To be adept at dealing with difficult co-workers, one must understand their psyche – what makes them tick, what is their most annoying characteristic and how best to keep them in check. Some of them do no work when the boss is not looking, but become over-active once the boss is around, some steal credit, others are aggressive and constantly try to hog the limelight, others go behind their co-workers back and butter up the boss while bad mouthing their colleagues. The worst is when such difficult co-workers form coteries and cut off others and use their ‘gang’ power to upset and undermine others around them. There are a number of varieties – the narcissists (can’t see beyond themselves), the office gossip (love spreading rumours – mean and sadistic), the one who slacks off, the regular whiner (nothing is ever right), the control freaks, the ones who stab you in the back while smiling and many other such vile and difficult co-worker varieties. Each of them has one thing in common – they are disruptive and must be dealt with immediately.
Leaving these ‘situations’ untouched and unaddressed would only lead to them getting bolder and stronger which in the long run will have an adverse effect on your best employees causing them to leave. As the work environment gets polluted and tough, the friction becomes more widespread and ultimately translates to poor customer service and reduced efficiency in dealing with customer related issues. It is highly unlikely that a company that has so much internal strife would be able to manage its customers well. Unmet customer demands and expectations can never be healthy and the result of these is that customers will slowly begin to leave and as news spreads, your company can say goodbye to any potential business as well.
Companies must deal with such people strictly and it is even better if the company culture and values clearly rule out that such behaviour would be grounds for termination. Weaving and consistently maintaining an environment that is free of difficult co-workers is the prime responsibility for a company. Employees on the other hand, should be confident enough to deal with such malefactors and put a stop to such behaviour at the outset. If there is such an errant worker and the company culture is intolerant of this behaviour, the other employees would feel more confident and empowered to speak about it and have it resolved. However, it is often noticed that junior levels display inappropriate behaviour because the top line ‘does it too’.
It gets highly stressful for the ‘good workers’ if one of these difficult co-workers seems hell bent on making one person’s life miserable. Constant conflicts would make the good one seem like a difficult person too. All too often, the mischief makers are also masters at containing their bad behaviour when those in authority are around and so if the afflicted employees constantly complains and the boss is unable to match any action to these complaints, it can have an adverse effect on the person complaining. They are then labelled as whiners, complainers and inefficient workers who cannot get along with people in the office. Such an afflicted person will either leave or will be asked to go – either way the company has a very disgruntled person who will most certainly speak ill of the company when they leave.
As the number of such disgruntled employees increase, the word of internal confusion becomes stronger and more believable, especially since the customers would also begin to see a drop in customer service, quality of products and overall efficiency of the company. Instead of having such a dysfunctional work environment, would it not be prudent to deal with the errant employees at the hint of a problem. Empower all your employees – at all levels – to not remain silent when they see such behaviour. They must report it immediately. Supervisors and managers must be asked to take any such breaches strictly and go to the root of the issue and ensure that the behaviour is not repeated.
Irrespective of a person’s experiences, skills and knowledge base, the employee would not be able to perform if they are too deal with this unnecessary stress and negativity. The company in fact, loses out when such highly skilled people leave to join competition and they would need to rehire, retrain and wait a while before the new employee can perform up to speed. Happy staff makes a happy workplace and is the cornerstone for the success and growth of a company and its people. Employees that are happy work better, are highly productive, are able to provide sustained levels of high quality customer service and ultimately help the company achieve its business goals.
So what is your company doing to ensure that employees do not need to deal with difficult co-workers? Every company would have its own manner of dealing with it and if not, must urgently put stringent steps in place to ensure that the good employees don’t feel pressured and harassed by these malefactors. The other benefit of dealing strictly with such negative influences is that others tempted to follow suit will be discouraged and would either stop or leave. Also other good employees would feel safer and more confident and their morale would remain high allowing them to work better and contribute to a winning work atmosphere.
- Initiate brainstorming meetings to not only identify problems and problematic employees, but also the possible solutions to such situations and persons. Encourage employees that regularly have great ideas that are simple yet implementable and highly effective. Openly praise and reward such ‘contributors’ which would serve as a way to diminish some of the strength of the negative employees.
- As a ‘good employee’ your job is to get to the root of the problem rather than taking pleasure in having difficult co-workers punished. It would be best not to assign blame or take names but rather speak of the behaviour that disrupts and causes distress.
- Steer clear of name calling, sarcasm and being nasty irrespective of how much discomfort you may have gone through. Indulging in this behaviour would make you seem like part of the problem. Provide instances and examples of the behaviour and leave it to the deciders to sort it out.
For a company to work as a cohesive seamless unit, each employee must respect the other. Difficult co-workers may be a reality but there is no reason to tolerate them. Each person must take the onus to be a good co-worker and value the contribution of the others. Making the work environment pleasant, such that each one benefits and performs well and in turn customers are well-looked after, is the responsibility of each person working in a company irrespective of level and stature.
