Photo by Cherrydeck on Unsplash
If you fail to successfully deal with toxic employees, your culture will experience a range of issues – from declining profits to legal problems. Not to mention your work environment will be so poisoned, you’ll be riddled with employee turnover.
For long-term success, it’s vital to prevent negativity, gossip and toxicity from infecting your team.
Toxicity is a major morale issue and is one of the reasons for the Great Resignation. Many discouraged employees might not even warn you they’re quitting as a result of rampant bullying, chronic disagreements or harassment.
By the way, it isn’t uncommon for many employers to find it necessary to hire outside participants to solve toxicity issues.
If you sense your workplace is a toxic environment, here are seven proven tactics:
1. Assess your situation
Accept the realization you have issues in toxicity. Identify how and where the toxicity originates. Walk the floor twice a day. Observe your employees. Ascertain how they interface with each other.
2. Increase communication with your workers
Publicly acknowledge the issues. Let everyone know you sense what’s happening and that you’ll soon be implementing solutions. Engage all employees and ask them open-ended questions.
Management – Improve Communication, Stop Rumor Mill
Invite opinions from your workers regarding their thoughts about the problems and what they think are possible solutions.
Just by listening, you’ll start getting insights about who is toxic, who isn’t and why.
3. Document the issues
Continue to engage your employees but add written questionnaires and surveys. Don’t overlook performance reviews. Use the reviews to get feedback, too.
4. Implement solutions
It’s time to take the next step in order to heal your workplace. Even as you continue to investigate, take corrective steps once you’ve identified the problems.
At this state, you’ll know who the troublesome workers are. Some negative employees only require a little coaching.
Other toxic employees will warrant your best coaching tactics.
For some, you might consider implementing the components of a personal improvement plan.
For some, you might consider implementing the components of a personal improvement plan.
If employees can’t be coached, they’ll probably have to be terminated. Before terminating employees, anticipate the obstacles.
5. Restorative procedures
Address the needs of your employees who have been harmed. Also, continue your focus on the problem employees. In other words, restore the relationships for a return to a health culture.
16 Best Practices to Stay out of Legal Trouble with Employees
6. Focus on values
Establish or revisit your company’s values. Be sure let your employees know the values and adequately explain why and how you’ll implement the values.
If your budget allows for training, your company’s values will be enhanced by getting strong results from a module for employees’ self-awareness.
7. Sustain the progress
Sustainability is vital for long-term success. Make certain your employees know you are determined to stay with the foundations you’ve built to improve their morale and the organization’s culture.
Continue walk the floor twice a day and tell your employees to feel free to communicate their feelings to you whenever they feel the need.
Use these measures and you’ll enjoy a great workplace environment. Soon, you’ll realize the secrets in motivating employees to give you profitable ideas.
From the Coach’s Corner, editor’s picks for additional reading:
7 Management Tips – Communication with Difficult Employees — Multiple problems including loss of profit result from ineffectively dealing with difficult employees. Here are seven Biz Coach tips.
6 Strategies to Deal with Employee Complaints — Besides giving you a management migraine, bad employee morale will hurt your workplace environment as well as your profits. So it’s important to immediately address problems. Here’s how.
6 Tips to Get Good Employee Ideas, Not Whining — Do you have employees who contribute positive ideas? Or do you have employees who always seem to whine? Aimless complaining is a symptom of problems in teamwork, morale, negativity and/or productivity. Here are six management strategies.
Profit Drivers – How and Why to Partner with Your Employees — If you want maximum profit, consider partnering with your employees. Here’s expert advice from leading financial consultant Roni Fischer.
Communication Tips to Lead Your 5 Generations of Workers — It’s one thing to create your company’s core values and mission. But it’s another to effectively communicate them and to embed them in your culture, especially across five generations of employees.
“A workplace that encourages self-awareness is an environment where the most productive, curious, and innovative people thrive.”
-Neil Blumenthal
__________
