Rather repeat the same stuff I’ve been saying for the last 11 years, consider what John Hall, co-founder and president of Calendar, says.
… workers aren’t liable to fall in love with a company over a handful of gimmicks and perks. … the things that really matter when it comes to sticking with an employer for a long time go deeper than decorations.
What are they?
Well, they aren’t rocket science — except to bosses whose heads are stuck in the past.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Why is happy so often equated with fun, as in “if you’re having fun you’re happy.” What makes you happy? A beautiful sunset? Your kids/grandkids? A quiet walk? Time with loved ones? For most people, It takes more substance than fluff to make them happy.
It’s well-proven that happy employees are more productive, but creating happy requires substance.
The components of long-term happiness are things such as challenging work, continued learning, opportunities to grow, clear communications, fair bosses, etc.
All of these require more thought, effort and skill from managers than installing a few foosball tables or gamifying the project.
Monday was about dealing with jerks in your workplace and yesterday about managing lazy co-workers.
What about bosses? Where are they? Why is it being left to workers to deal with problem co-workers?
Over the years (decades, actually), I’ve heard all the excuses — ‘I can’t be everywhere’, ‘I’m working on it’, or the ubiquitous ‘I’m busy’.
Those are the “good” excuses; here are the bad ones — ‘they’re really good at [whatever]’, ‘they’re a friend/relative of X’, ‘they’ve been here since the beginning’, and, in some ways, the worst ‘deal with it’.
Being self-motivated and self-managing should not include having to manage your colleagues.
That’s the boss’ job and why they make the bigger bucks.
I’ve never forgotten what Terry Dial, who eventually became vice chairman of Business Banking at Wells Fargo, told me decades ago when I was a recruiter, “People are 90% of our costs as well as the key to customer service and satisfaction. The only thing that should take priority over hiring a new employee is keeping a current one.”
That hasn’t changed in all these years.
Which begs the question, what are the bosses doing?
Avoiding direct interactions by hiding behind social media and chat apps, just as they hid behind email and, before that, memos.
Sometimes it’s because they are promoted in spite of not being a “people person,” which has nothing to do with whether they are extroverts or introverts.
Good bosses know that when someone is messing up, hurting or one of the other myriad causes of less than optimum behavior, it’s their responsibility.
Yesterday we took another look at the effects of, and how to deal with, jerks in the workplace. Today’s guest post by Ariel Schur addresses a different problem, i.e., colleagues who don’t pull their weight.
Most of us have dealt with a lazy colleague at some point in our professional career. They do the bare minimum, but just enough to fly under the radar. Coworkers like these unfortunately have the capability of single-handedly undermining group work or projects with looming deadlines. Yet, somehow, they have managed to remain employed – and some even manage to get ahead! Are employees simply supposed to grin and bear it? What can we do when we’re saddled with a lazy coworker?
There are effective ways to combat this issue at work and potentially change that colleague’s behavior moving forward.
Speak to your colleague directly
Approach your colleague with your concerns, relate their performance back to how it affects you. For example, “I’ve been taking on a lot of your work assignments lately and it’s preventing me from getting my own work done”, or “I had to re-do your part of the project because it didn’t follow the requirements”. Making them realize how their shortcomings are affecting the performance of yourself or the group is the first step if you want their behavior to change. From there, talk about ways to hold each other accountable and hold up each end of the bargain for future collaborations.
It is usually best to first try approaching your colleague with your concerns before going to your manager. Not only is this proper workplace etiquette, but why take the problem to someone else if you may be able to solve it on your own?
Document all correspondence
Any e-mail, conversation transcription, group notes, etc. will be helpful. Keeping a paper trail of all written (or verbal) communication is important for two reasons; 1) so you can remind your colleague of all the times you talked to them regarding the issue, and 2) you’ll have examples to bring up to your boss or manager, in the event that you do have to talk to them about the situation. If it does need to be reported, I suggest going directly to whoever is overseeing the project or would hold you responsible if the work is not completed.
Keep a Positive Attitude to Avoid Adopting Their Work Ethic
It’s easy to let a coworker’s laziness affect your attitude at work. You may even feel tempted to think “well, if they’re not going to do it, neither am I” – but that’s a bad idea. Your reputation is directly correlated to your performance and that is not worth risking. If you talked to your colleague and/or supervisor and do not see a change, do not let it influence the work you’ve put in. Always remain professional and continue to be the conscientious worker you are!
Dealing with lazy colleagues is never easy. Talking to them about the issue is often times enough for things to improve, but in some instances you may be required to take extra steps. Try to work with them, keep track of all the problems that arise as a result of their slack, and do not let it affect your own performance. Taking these steps to combat the issue are sure to make your life at your job easier moving forward.
Ariel Schur, LCSW is the CEO and sole founder of ABS Staffing Solutions. Her high-touch, service-oriented approach has been a refreshing change to the industry. Ariel prides herself on developing highly customized relationships with clients so that they can find the right employee matches for any and all employment needs. Ariel has set a new standard for the “boutique” approach to staffing. Her work model is time-intensive, specifically tailored to her clients’ specific needs, and all-encompassing to provide the highest quality experience.
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Welch is still alive and must love today’s optimized millennials, who were raised to constantly strive and never stop working. Burnout would be no problem, since he could simply fire them.
In spite of that I doubt he could manage them; neither they, nor their elders, would take kindly to his style.
In fact, Welch’s approach is actually the fastest way to produce a bumper crop of weeds.
I’ve disagreed with Jack Welch many times going back to the start of this blog. In December 2006 I wrote Men Want A Life, Too in response to Welch’s comment.
“We do acknowledge that work-life balance is usually a much harder goal for women with children. For them, there is about a 15-year period in their careers in which the choices they make are not about what they want from life professionally and personally but about what is right for their kids. It can be a fraught time, since choices and consequences are more complex. That, however, is a topic for another column.”
It took two-and-a-half years, but he did return to that topic recently at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference telling them that women need to choose between raising kids and running a company.
“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” (The article is from the Wall Street Journal and is the first link on this Google search page.)
Putting the comments together we have a high profile x-CEO who believes that the way to the top is for both men and women to make the tough choice and put their family second to their career.
Just let relatives, nannies (if you can afford them), daycare, schools, friends, gangs and the internet raise the next generation.
Why do comments like these come primarily from old, rich white guys?
What planet are they living on? More importantly have they bothered listening to today’s workers—and I don’t mean just Millennials.
As long as this is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that runs companies that attitude will translate to corporate action and companies will face problems staffing. The recession won’t go on forever and demographically there’s a serious people shortage at every level and in every field.
If you really want to attract the best and brightest men and women then you need to recognize that their priorities have changed and if forced to choose the company will, in most cases, come in second.
And those candidates who do choose company over life may lack the empathy needed to innovate and market, let alone lead, the current workforce.
There are plenty of companies that already know this and have adjusted their culture accordingly, but most will be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality once the economy turns around, demographics rears its ugly head and they have no choice.
As you probably guessed, Jack Welch has been on my mind, mainly because I was stuck having lunch with a retired executive who went on and on about what a great role model Welch is.
When I disagreed, with specific examples, he informed me that he expected my reaction because I was a woman.
Huh?
Wow. I’m really glad this guy is retired, because he sure doesn’t relate to today’s workers no matter their age.
But nothing replaces high EQ, empathic, humane (not just human) bosses.
Not processes, not technology, not AI, and definitely not robots.
No matter what big and little tech want, believe or tell us, people are analog and always will be. For that matter, the real world is analog and always will be.
So, for the foreseeable future, the management and leadership skills needed to grow strong, creative, highly productive workers will be found in those who understand the limits of digital and can move freely and successfully in an analog world filled with analog people.
Back when Jack Welch implemented forced ranking throughout GE. was perched at the top of management gurus he
Also known as forced distribution and, derisively, as “rank and yank,” the practice was championed by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who insisted that GE identify and remove the bottom 10 percent of the workforce every year.
Hundreds of companies used it, including tech giants, but most (all?) have stopped. Some took longer than others, Microsoft got rid of it in 2015.
Amazing how it’s only taken 30+ years for management to figure out that setting employee against employee does not foster teamwork.
Having to watch your back, knowing it’s “you or them,” doesn’t foster anything.
But even without a formal forced ranking policy, some managers still believe that pitting team members against each other is the fastest way to boost productivity.
However, it’s a great way to increase your experience hiring
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
I wrote this in 2012 and reposted it in 2015. The idea behind it is one the most important and viable concepts a manager (supervisor, team lead, executive) will (can, should) learn during their career. It is the difference between good and great.
As companies grow and managers build their organizations they frequently talk about “weeding out” low performing employees—Jack Welch was a ninja weeder.
If that thought has crossed your mind you might take a moment to think about James Russell Lowell’s comment, “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”
As with weeds, there are better ways to look at under-performing employees.
95% of the time it’s management failures that create weeds and those failures run the gamut from benign neglect to malicious abuse and everything in-between.
Weeds can come from outside your company, inter-departmental transfers and even from peers in your own backyard.
What is amazing is how quickly a weed will change with a little TLC.
“Weeds can grow quickly and flower early, producing vast numbers of genetically diverse seed.”
People grow quickly, too, and often produce innovative ideas just because someone listened instead of shutting them down.
And while trust that your attitude won’t change takes longer to build, the productivity benefits happen fairly rapidly.
So before you even think about weeding look in the mirror and be sure that the person looking back is a gardener and not a weed producer.
When you’re a boss, one of your biggest responsibilities is to help your people grow.
Doing that requires patience, because they won’t all grow at the same rate.
Some people grow fast, like a hare, others are more in the tortoise category, but that doesn’t make them less valuable.
The hares may grow faster, but the growth often lacks substance. Tortoises, on the other hand, are known to dig deep in order to go beyond the knowledge needed to do something and understand the underlying principles.
Speed is important and the lack of depth may not be a problem until something goes wrong. Finding a solution or work-around often requires the deeper understanding that tortoises possess.
The smart boss knows having a balance of both hares and tortoises yields the strongest team; one that can accomplish far more on time and in budget than a team that is predominantly one type or the other.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
