Office conflict: Employees behaving badly
Behaviour / 01 July 2010
Dodgy behaviour at work is not just about swearing or bullying.Subtler forms can be just as harmful but harder to deal with.Pepi Sappal looks at how to put a cap on Facebook time-wasters and banish those annoying Monday sickies
You spot Brenda secretly sampling Diane’s lunch from the fridge. You notice Tony downloading music illegally on his computer, Sofia using Facebook several times a day and the odd lewd comment from David. You are not alone. According to research by business insurer Hiscox in December 2009, 70% of UK workers claim such questionable behaviour is rife in their workplace.
Even your star performers can become embroiled in subtle forms of bad behaviour from backstabbing to passive-aggressiveness, random Monday or Friday sickies and petty theft. It’s this more insidious bad behaviour that’s tougher to manage.
“Subtle bad behaviour is hard to deal with, especially if there is no company policy or it’s seen as the cultural norm,” says Dr Michael Reddy, director at HR consultants Shenley Holdings. “In many ways, it’s much harder to deal with than really overt bad behaviour, because you can’t resort to the usual company disciplinary process.”
Generally, an informal chat explaining the problem to the individual can work wonders
Valerie Garrow, associate director, Institute for Employment Studies
Many managers make the mistake of ignoring such conduct, hoping it will blow over.
But the cost can be high, say professors Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, authors of The Cost of Bad Behaviour. Seemingly minor problems will only get worse the longer they are left, and what may seem like trivial examples of bad office manners can have a serious affect on staff morale.
Bad atmosphere
In Pearson and Porath’s book, the research shows that after an incident of uncivil conduct (such as a standoffish colleague or an arrogant boss), 48% of staff reduce their effort at work, 38% intentionally decrease the quality of their work and 80% waste time worrying about the incident. The majority (60%) of employees attribute this type of unwanted subtle misbehaviour to excessive workload. Without doubt, the current economic crisis has certainly increased tensions at work. “People are under great pressure,” says Reddy. “They may have gone from a two-family earner to a one-family earner, or staff may be feeling guilty about colleagues that have been let go, yet at the same time they are stressed as they are expected to do the job of one and a half people. It’s inevitable that people will react.”
“If you ask staff to take on more work for no extra reward, or to take a pay cut for the same hours, you are changing the psychological contract,” says Valerie Garrow, associate director at the Institute for Employment Studies. “Staff then feel let down and betrayed, and as a result they engage in negative behaviour to redress the balance.
“Some employees will try and increase what they get by engaging in petty theft or stealing time by calling in sick more often. Or they engage in more insidious behaviour, by simply not doing their bit or doing less.”
A cry for help?
Stella Harris, a public sector manager working in education, says that in many cases employees will act up as a cry for attention.
“Last year, I noticed one of my team members was more negative than usual, often undermining me and other colleagues. She was often obstructive and challenged everything. She started to arrive late to meetings, usually in an irritable mood, and then spent her time checking emails or texting. Yet she never answered team member calls or responded to emails in a timely manner. So I monitored her behaviour over a week, making notes of incidents and saw a pattern emerging.”
After collating enough evidence, Harris raised the issue at their regular one to one weekly review.
“I decided to have an informal chat with her by asking how she was coping with her workload, then mentioned I had noticed changes in her behaviour. Initially she was defensive, but once I gave her concrete examples and explained the impact on the team, it emerged that she couldn’t cope with the extra work she had been given recently. I was empathetic, but pointed out that this behaviour was not acceptable, and we worked together to find solutions to deal with the extra work. Shortly after that informal chat, her productivity, cooperation and mood improved.”
Sometimes these conversations can reveal a more serious problem, such as bullying at work, or a personal or family problem outside the office. In these cases it may be best to get HR involved, says Garrow. “But generally, an informal chat explaining the problem to the individual can work wonders.”
Be prepared
It’s vital to have ammunition – hard facts – and work out what you want to say before you raise the issue with the employee, says Dr Reddy. “It’s also important to approach it in a non-blaming and non-threatening way, yet be straightforward.”
Sometimes making a clever comment can be enough to nip things in the bud.
“One staff member was sometimes quite rude and sarcastic to everyone, especially in the mornings, so I made a point of catching him on a coffee break and asked him if he was OK,” says Harris. “It turned out that his twin toddlers had been keeping him up most nights. My response: ‘So that’s why you were a bit ratty this morning.’ Of course, he didn’t realise his behaviour was affecting colleagues. He apologised and was more careful with his tone and use of words after that.”
However, there are times when it pays to turn a blind eye, says Tony Watson, professor of organisational behaviour at Nottingham University Business School. “If you spot someone using the company phone to make a dental appointment, it’s probably not worth making an issue of it, but if he’s using it to call his mum for the sixth time that morning, you might want to raise it. That said, you still need to tread carefully. It’s vital to find out what’s going on as there could be a valid explanation.”
Ultimately, the ability to deal with this type of bad behaviour boils down to how intuitive and emotionally intelligent a manager is, adds Watson, “because subtle bad behaviour requires a subtle form of management.”