If your business is facing challenging times, then you should look for signs of trouble with your employees. Right now, you may be having to make choices that are unpopular but necessary. This could involve perks going away or other cutbacks.
Often, people don’t immediately share their dissatisfaction with supervisors. Instead, they start to act out through microaggressions.
Here’s an example from my time spent in TV news. News vehicles are driven a lot every day and they go through a lot of gasoline. At most stations, the photographers who work the late shift and drive the cars or live trucks, are responsible for filling them up before they go home.
But that did not always happen. Imagine reporting for the morning shift, being immediately sent out to cover breaking news, and discover your news car has an empty gas tank.
The crew then had to spend at least five minutes filling up. In news time, five minutes is a frustratingly long time. You might miss something your competitors got because you were five minutes late.
Was the late shift photographer a bad person? Probably not but he or she chose not to follow a policy. The root cause was usually dissatisfaction with management. It could be frustration with the shift, salary, or additional responsibilities.
Rather than talk about these concerns, the employee does little acts of sabotage against the organization. Other signs of trouble with your employees can include people taking home office supplies, enjoying longer lunch breaks, leaving trash in the parking lot, or doing non-work tasks during work hours.
When you add up all these protests, they will affect the performance and morale of your business. And bad behavior can spread like a virus though an organization. Consider these tips to help refocus your team:
Open Communication
There’s a connection between uncertainty and bad behavior in business. If you’re dealing with lots of bad news, people will pick up on it, whether you say anything about it or not.
Why not take control of the situation and share the challenges. Nervous about sharing bad news? You may want to give a best or better case scenario, rather than doomsday. Even a sanitized version of reality is better than silence.
It’s also smart to make sure there is good communication up through your organization. When challenging times happen, leaders sometimes isolate themselves. When you cut off access, you create suspicion and doubt.
Hear people’s concerns and acknowledge the pain that may come from some of your decisions. While there may be nothing you can do to change the situation, simply listening to the concerns can reduce employee anger.
Reward Good Behavior
You may have identified signs of trouble with your employees but don’t want to discipline them, for fear of losing them. In this situation, consider rewarding people who are doing things the right way.
From our empty news car gas tank example, you could create a loyalty program for those who fill up their vehicles every night. If they do the task a certain amount of times, then they receive a gift card.
While this is an added expense, consider the cost of ongoing and likely increasing microaggressions.
Tough Love
If you’ve listened to employee concerns, explained business challenges, and incentivized following current policies, then you may need to take action, if certain employees don’t change their behaviors.
It’s tough to let people go, especially if they are good at their jobs. But even if someone is considered irreplaceable, you can’t be a great employee if you’re consistently demonstrating bad behavior.
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