Critical employee – complaints: 3 things to do.

The productivity of employees is always a current topic and in spite of the technological revolution that we are undergoing the problem seems far from solved.

From this study:

Low productivity at work of the employees   – Repubblica News 

It seems that this problem is mainly due to poor management of the employees by the managers.

I have already talked about it in various articles and here, if it can be useful, I added one that explains some of the errors that managers commit:

Serious mistakes that make personnel run away and that cause poor management of human resources.

Today however I want to talk about a specific type of employee, the critical one that always complains about everything. If you are an entrepreneur or a manager and you care about the productivity of your employees you will surely have had this kind of employee.

Personally I have encountered this type when I was managing a training and coaching group and having a mild and patient personality I always thought that by communicating in a polite and gentle manner I would have solved the problem. Sometimes I managed to do this, sometimes no. As time went by however things got worse, because the people that I was not able to deal with influenced my day, and not only my work day. As time passed, I was stressed and demotivated and as a consequence I was not managing at my best the rest of the group.   

I was turning into one of them. Bearish, always complaining and always looking for the problem and never the solution.

Then luckily, the management of the company I was working for helped me by getting me trained and so I understood many things…

When I went back to managing groups this time I was not going to fall for it again.

In short, I always focused every evaluation on the productivity of the employees by measuring it objectively, not taking into account a subjective judgement. It was not important whether I liked them or not. I focused on making them productive and aligned with the goals and strategies of the team. Every time that this did not happen I worked on it and if nothing changed I would send them somewhere else.

I know what you are thinking. Well no, it’s not like I became a sergeant!

I kept my mild and gentle personality and whenever necessary I would pull out my stick…(very rarely).

Anyhow I want to suggest to you three simple things that you can start doing to hold off people that always complain.

1. All your evaluations on the productivity of you empolyees should only be based on a reliable system that measure their production.
   
   

   Arguments only come about because there isn’t an agreement on the evaluations and also due to lack of measurable, visible and objective parameters. Sometimes also with this there seems to be no solution.

   Let alone with critical and super critical employees. Every time they start complaining focus on their performance and tell them you are only interested in solutions to increase their performance and you are not interested in the reasons to why it cannot be improved. Don’t think that they will overwhelm you with solutions right away but keep on encouraging and training them.

2. Organize production meetings where employees are aware of the fact that they need to account for their production and be prepared with solutions at hand.
   
   Meetings are a delicate moment where critical employees can start arguing and wreak havoc and really put you to the test. Therefor it is vital that you conduct a meeting with the hard and fast rule that criticisms are not allowed but only facts with solutions. If they really want to express “their ideas” tell them that you will talk about it with them privately. This will allow you to block off negativity and not lower the tone of the meeting.

3. Create a meritocratic system of awards and penalties that discourages low productivity of employees and the critical, blame-game attitude when things are not going well.
   
   The use of an objective assessment system and the management of meetings could not be enough if the clear and strict directives on productive performance of employees are not applied. Just for a few examples: If a person complains but has a good performance you can still overlook this since he is doing his job. If it’s the contrary you should shut him up and tell him that he should cut down his breaks and start working on meeting his production targets. You can personalize this for your activity but the same principle should always be applied.

Additional requirement: if you have done all three of these points but your employee just keeps on going with his “constructive criticisms” that really bother you and they undermine the spirit of your team well then you can only show him the way out since his motivations are most certainly not aligned with the well being of your team but he is trying to serve his self-interested disguised in “it cannot be done or it should not be done like this”.

What do you think? I would like to receive your feedback.

To know more on how to manage employees download NOW the eBook or contact us for FREE CALL…