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A part of building your company’s reputation is your employees. If a company has good employees, then the work environment will be healthy hence it will reflect on the business and the overall performance and productivity.
But what if you are struggling with your employees’ attitudes as some can’t always remain positive nor know how to show respect for their colleagues or the rules? This is when you interfere, many companies can have employees with bad attitudes but over time they can do better.
Here’s how to manage employees with bad attitude.
Find The Reason For The Bad Attitude
A bad attitude could be the result of an issue or it simply could be one of the employee’s personality traits, you need to know which one is it.
Employees might have a bad attitude if their salary is really low or not being appreciated. If this is the reason for the bad attitude, then it can be manageable by having a one-to-one meeting and listening to their problems.
While some employees can have a valid reason, others don’t. Some employees behave this way due to personality flaws, like arrogance, feeling that they’re better than others, or simply they’re careless.
In this situation, you should be taking action to make them work on their attitude.
Specify What Is Acceptable And What Isn’t
As a manager, you must set certain rules for your employees on how to behave inside the workplace.
Every company has its rules, whether it’s a dress code, annual leave, loud noise, etc. Make a list of what shouldn’t and should the employees do and then tell them to read this list. If anyone breaks the rules, a warning is enough to let them know what they did.
Make sure that your employees know the rules before taking any action.
Don’t Prefer An Employee Over The Other
Your employees need to feel that they’re all treated equally.
Don’t show special treatment to certain employees as it can make the others behave in a negative attitude. Even if one of the employees breaks the rules, don’t treat them differently because it will only increase their negative behavior.
Promote The Concept Of Communication
Communication shouldn’t be just between you and your employees, it should be between employees too.
Encourage your employees to communicate with each other not just with you. If someone doesn’t like their colleague’s behavior, they should speak to them politely. You shouldn’t be the one to solve every problem, your employees should be able to solve conflicts too.
Also, by encouraging them to communicate, they will be encouraged to help each other to enhance their bad attitude. Make sure that there shouldn’t be any hard feelings between them and promote the idea that you’re all working for the best to have a healthy work environment.
If Nothing’s Changed, Develop An Action Plan
If you gave warnings and nothing changed, then it’s time to put a plan and execute it.
Your action plan should include private meetings with the employee who has a bad attitude. You should point out the attitude and tell them what they did. Tell them what you expect from them after this meeting and that you will always monitor their progress.
Also, let your employees know that if nothing has changed there will be major consequences to their bad attitude.
Could Saying Goodby Be The Solution? And When?
This is the last resort you’ll go to if the bad attitude starts affecting the entire team.
Many employees will end up apologizing for their bad behavior and will enhance it yet there will be ones who won’t care and will force you to be professional and use the company’s policies to give them warnings.
If the attitude is not fixed, then sometimes you will have to let them go. This is the only solution if the attitude is affecting the whole team, the productivity, and the employees’ performance.
Even if the employee is productive and one of the best, you’ll have to put the company and employees’ own good first.
Remember, your employees are what build your company’s reputation, so make sure, you’re always making decisions for the greater good.