Dealing with Difficult Employees (Essay Sample)

DEALING WITH DIFFICULT EMPLOYEES
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Employee productivity, morale as well as customer service levels are at their zenith when employees work and coordinate events collectively as a team and practice basic tenets of respect and dignity for each other. Unfortunately, this is, however, is not the case. There arises inappropriate behavior among some employees. Disruptive employees are usually difficult to deal with and are thus termed as difficult employees CITATION Chr13 \l 1033 (Osborne, 2013). Behavior that is inconsistent with basic professional and collegial norms and expectations can bring about significant harmful consequences to the organization and the employees. This can thus increase the potential legal ability of an organization. This paper will focus on the issues surrounding difficult employees.
There are common types of disruptive and difficult employee behavior and may have great effects on the organization if they are left uncorrected. Difficult employees have certain behavior or characteristics which they possess. These acts or behavior define them. Some of the behaviors or characteristics which can make one be termed a difficult employee include using angry or hostile toes when talking, making rude, insulting, condescending and demeaning statements to others. The other trait that they have is the they throw things, shout or slam doors when they are displeased. Additionally, these employees berate colleagues and staff in front of others and are verbally and physically abusive toward others. In addition, these employees threaten litigation when they are displeased or challenged and regularly become the source of several issues which when considered singly would be of less significance but when taken wholly become highly essential.
Difficult employees are not the best for an organization CITATION Don11 \l 1033 (Crawley, 2011). This is because when many of these disruptive behaviors occur in tandem, they can become destructive to the work environment. They can develop into workplace bullying which is a destructive and harmful form of interpersonal abuse. Such behaviors that are propagated by difficult employees should be taken care of by managers so as to mitigate the negative impacts on the organization.
The issue of difficult employees is on the increase in today’s workplaces. Workplace bullying and other negative employee behaviors are on the increase. The end result of these is that they affect leaders, employees and organizations. Workplace bullying is characterized by persistent and repeated attempts by a person to wear down, torment, get reaction or frustrate another. This is a kind of treatment that persistently pressures, provokes, intimidates or frightens another person.
Disruptive employee behavior creates negative work environments as well as unhealthy consequences for other employees CITATION Jam12 \l 1033 (Lewis, 2012). For instance, employees who experience incivility, bullying or interpersonal conflict are more likely to leave their jobs, be less satisfied with their jobs, have lower well-being and have relationships which are less satisfying with their bosses than those employees who are harassed sexually. In addition, employees who are bullied reveal more job stress, higher levels of anxiety and anger and less job commitment.
To avoid broken ties and harsh effects on the organization, managers should look into ways of dealing with difficult employees. Dealing with such employees calls for a measure of positivity and patience. Even with a manager’s best efforts, some of the employees will still be unwilling or refuse to change their disruptive attitudes or behaviors. When it goes to such extreme ends, severe discipline and even termination may be necessary. When a manager is forced to take such severe disciplinary measures, it serves to stop the vice and also as a warning to other disruptive employees. This way, some of them end up changing.
The procedure that supervisors and managers should take to effectively for them to be able to manage disruptive or difficult employee and to lessen the likelihood of the necessity of formally instituted discipline and termination should include identification as well as analysis of the employee, holding a constructive discussion of the problem behaviors with the employee, reacting accordingly to the employee’s response pertaining the behavior, documenting the discussion and finally conducting a follow-up with the employee. As such, successful managers and supervisors recognize that there are far fewer truly difficult employees than there are problematic employee behaviors. This thus translates to that as manager’s primary role is not to manage people but manage people’s behavior within the restricted parameters of the organizational environment.
There are many times that one comes across a difficult or disruptive employee. Like everybody, I had to deal with a disruptive colleague on one occasion. These are the kind of