The Negative Employee Dilemma

Negative employees are like viruses. They infect everyone around them by contaminating the workplace with their contagious negative attitudes.

One negative employee can do considerable damage to customer and co-worker relationships by shutting down creativity, enthusiasm and positive energy. Their attitude can lower productivity, morale and sales. It can even result in increased stress and absenteeism.

So why is it tolerated? Many managers don't know how to deal with negative employees so they choose to ignore the situation, hoping the problem will eventually go away. The rest of the team perceives the manager's silence as acceptance and, as a result, the situation worsens.

Is it possible to turn an employee's attitude around? Sometimes, but it can be difficult. Chances are that it's their nature to be negative and there won't be much change unless they take ownership of their behaviors. They may require professional help in order to do so.

Negative behaviors can be caused by fear, insecurity, past failures, and personal problems or frustration. It's easy to assume that an individual is just choosing to be difficult. Usually, where there is negativity--there is pain. Kindness, listening and empathy can go a long way toward helping an employee to open up and may help you get to the underlying problem.

When giving a negative employee feedback, focus on specific behaviors, rather than making a general statement about attitude.

When customers and co-workers have attached a negative attitude label to a specific employee, it's time to evaluate that employee's cost to the organization.

The cost of a negative employee to a company can be measured in the following ways:

• Cost of losing an angry customer

• Cost of wasting time with re-work caused by the employee's refusal to handle the service properly the first time

• Cost of replacing employees who leave because they don't want to work with this negative employee

• Cost of negative word-of-mouth advertising (it only takes one bad customer service experience to trigger a chain reaction)

• Cost of overall diminished morale within the department

• Cost of time wasted by supervisor trying to "fix" the employee's
  attitude

These costs need to be weighed against the employee's overall value to the organization and that individual's willingness to change.

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