In the new era of intense competition, rapid changes and escalating cost pressures to run an enterprise, leaders at all levels have to take timely, hard decisions for the good of all stakeholders. You cannot tolerate any employee who creates issues and upsets the broad culture built over the years with sweat and pain.
Look around - can you confidently say that you don’t have such employees poisoning the nice performance driven culture? Your organization broadcasts all the good values of the organization and cultural attributes that should be embraced and nurtured by all employees. You have regular sessions to further instill these values, policies and practices to enhance productivity to stay competitive. But don’t we all have employees who use their deceitful, malicious and duplicitous (double-faced) nature to take advantage and sometimes not only ridicule co-workers but their bosses as well.
They play tricks to mask their bosses and create a small fan base with personal relationships around the function, school, church and other informal affiliations for their survival. The weak employees fall for such manipulators.
Costly affair
Sometimes, even when you’re doing what you love and do it well, a co-worker or a boss can make your job miserable. When a colleague is being confrontational and your mutual boss seems to always take your colleague’s side, you may feel isolated in your workplace.
Handling such situations calmly and responsibly can allow you to maintain a happy and productive work environment. You see situations where your boss sides with such misbehaving co-workers unfairly. Document as many examples of these types of behaviour as you can.
Note the time, date and place of such behaviour. Not only may it be important to generate these details in order to eventually speak with your co-worker and boss, but they will be helpful should you need to file a grievance against your co-worker, your boss or both.
When you’ve accumulated enough detailed information regarding your co-worker’s confrontational behaviour and your boss’s unfair treatment, you should seek out support personnel from inside. Start with your human resources department and your good colleagues who share the company values and honour them without exception.
Professionals in the Human Resource department have experience in dealing with such issues and are trained to facilitate the resolution of employee misbehaviour affecting the culture.
Offer solutions for resolving the tension between you, your co-worker and your boss when you speak with them about your working relationship. Say that you noticed an unproductive habit developing in how you all get along in the workplace, and you are interested in working together to solve this problem.
This allows you to avoid simply accusing your co-worker of being snarky and your boss of playing favourites. Additionally, it demonstrates your willingness to cooperate with your co-workers even when it is challenging to do so.
Speak up
Organizations cannot and shouldn’t tolerate attitudes and behaviour of a few bad employees. The cost of that tolerance may be huge. It takes away the unity and harmony of the entire team. So speak up and report when you see such misaligned behaviour by a co-worker when facts are lined up.
It does affect not only the overall productivity of the business but your own growth too.
If a boss is biased towards a particular employee, watch and confirm your gut feeling with the observations of your close co-workers. Use all formal and accepted channels of communication to report and seek justice - after all your business success is the base for your success.
Don’t allow anyone to spoil it. Live by the values to create value for the business and you.