3 Rules For Dealing With A Lazy Employee
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. If you’ve got lazy employees working for you, productivity is going to take a big hit. Even if it’s just one person that isn’t pulling their weight, it’ll have a knock on effect on the rest of the office and it can cause tensions between employees if people feel that they’re working hard and getting paid the same as somebody that isn’t really doing much at all. That’s why it’s important to deal with it right away before the problem gets worse. If you don’t really know how to go about it, these are some of the best ways to deal with a lazy employee.
Employee Reviews
When it comes time to carry out your employee reviews, you can use this as an opportunity to find out what’s going on. These One2One performance reviews can be a bit useless if you’re not asking the right questions but they can actually be very beneficial if you take the opportunity to ask your employees about bigger issues with their performance. Often, it might be the case that people aren’t simply lazy, but they’re distracted by things that are happening in their personal lives. Ask them if everything is ok and whether there is anything that they need help with. Don’t go straight in accusing them of being lazy when you don’t know the full situation.
If there aren’t any other reasons for this dip in performance, you need to make it clear to them that it’s not acceptable and they need to make some improvements. Now is a good time to set some goals for the next few months so they have a clear idea of what you expect from them.
Give Them New Responsibilities
This might sound like the last thing you want to be doing with a lazy employee but it can work very well. They might be slacking off because they’re bored with doing the same things day in, day out. But if you give them a new challenge, it might kickstart their creativity and encourage them to start working harder. That doesn’t mean you should be promoting them or anything, but if you’ve got other employees with a particularly high workload, you can spread a few of those duties out a bit.
Assess Their Job Role
If progress is slow, it might just be because that employee is lazy. But it might also be because their job is difficult and there are certain processes that are outdated and slow. That’s why it’s a good idea to assess their job role and see whether there are any obvious reasons for their low output. By making a few changes to the business processes that they come up against and maybe even updating computer software, you might find that they start getting a lot more done.
Lazy employees can be difficult because there are often other reasons why their work isn’t good. That’s why it’s important to approach the situation carefully and follow these steps.