Eye on the Workforce

I've not told this story before. Not sure why. Maybe because it's embarrassing. Maybe something else. The reason to tell you now  is because I may be coming off as a know-it-all who does not really understand what is going on in your world. For your consideration, then, is this story of when I dealt with "problem" employee. What happened here is one reason why I am forever obsessed with managing the workforce correctly. There's a lesson for all of us here.

Many, many years ago, one of my first direct reports was a good employee. She took control of her responsibilities and added value. She was very assertive - something that was needed - and I was of course "enlightened" so I did not feel threatened. There was one incident that I charatcterized as unusual at the time. A company we purchased materials from complained to me about her behavior. According tot he customer service agent, this employere had used bad language and threats to resolve a disagreement. Surprised, I took it up with the employee, to get her side of the story. I made it clear that the behavior described by the customer service agent was not acceptable, but the employe felt that the agent had overblown the whole thing. Looking back, my intervention was not rigorous enough.

I made a note of this incident, and that was the end of it. Months later, I went to another position in the ever-changing company. The Fickle Finger of Fate pointed at me again, though, because I was to take over a new department a year later, and she was again a direct report. Now she had her own team and was successful. Through passive aggressive behavior, she was resistant to collaborating with the other teams reporting to me. I was "enlightened," remember, and understood that she may feel strongly about her ability to handle things herself. I played it laisses faire for a while.

Boy was I naive. In my next entry, I'll explain how this awkward situation ended up not with the employee disciplinary process, but with jail time.

Workers today - including you - are working all day and into the evening with their mobile tools and communications devices. They find it hard to leave stress at work. There is no work and no time to turn off. Many studies have shown that their social lives are suffering for it.  If you you haven't already, you are going to see reduced performance. It's hard to pinpoint stress as a cause, though. Worse, you may find it difficult to manage stress because they have workers who are temporary or transient, or managed by someone else entirely. What to do, what to do? 

It's the little things that count. Recognize accomplishments and effort - often. More often than you think you should. You should have heard of this before. What you may have not heard before is what I call "instant flex." It's not as formal as flex time. When someone needs to leave work to handle something, they naturally are concrned that they will not be available for work. Team mates may frown upon this unexpected loss of resource. Make it clear to your workers at the beginning of the project that everyone can leave to handle family issues or unexpected fixed-time appointments. This will bring great relief and minimize the backlash from other workers when they do leave. It will reduce stress all the way around.

One of the issues that needs to be dealt with better on our site is handling the "difficult" employee. You would be surprised at the reports of unusual, awkward, even bizarre employee behavior. Or maybe you wouldn't. But here is what gets me: Some exasperated PMs are exasperated because they are not taking advantage of the employee discipline system available to them in their company. Either you use the system or someone else does (another manager, for example). You don't have to put up with difficult employees except in rare cases, so why do you? Think about the stress on you and others. Think about the adverse impacts on the project. People, life is too short! Make a promise to yourself to take that first step. Think about what you will say in that first meeting with the difficult employee. Draft your approach. Run it by an HR specialist. Get ready. You can do it. Next time at the bar, you'll turn your "belly aching" into bragging about how you successfully handled a problem employee.

Never underestimate the power of a hard working employee. They even improve the work of slackers. Now it has been proven scientifically. Researchers found that co-workers who had the chance to reduce work and let a hard worker take up the slack did not do this when the hard worker could see how hard they worked. In fact, under these conditions, slackers worked even harder than they had worked previously.  

How can you ensure that your slackers are intimidated – I mean motivated – in this way? 

• Hire hard workers to be on every team. Not the team lead, but a team member.
• Through a standard, fair recognition program, make sure team members see the amount of work the hard worker completes. And make sure their own productivity can be seen by the hard worker.
• Let peer presure take its course.