How to Manage Lazy Employees - 6 Ways to Deal With Lazy Employees
Working out how to manage lazy team members and taking the right action to reduce or remove the issue is a challenge most managers’ dread.
If you ignore lazy employees at work, laziness has a way of spreading into the rest of the team. Taking action quickly is a must.
I am sharing 6 tried and tested ways to deal with lazy employees so you can deal with lazy team members effectively and fairly.
When you are managing lazy employees, the first action is not to ignore the lazy behaviour. If you do, you are sending a message to the lazy team member and the rest of your team that being lazy is okay. Then laziness starts spreading through the team, and your management ability starts being questioned.
The second action to manage lazy team members is to find out why the employee is being lazy. There are lots of reasons, and once you understand why, then you can work out how to deal with lazy team members much more easily and successfully. Your approach should be tailored to the employee and the situation.
When motivating lazy employees, setting expectations is really important. Add clear goals to be achieved, ideally agreed with lazy team member, so that both parties know when expectations have been met or exceeded.
Next when working out how to manage lazy employees in the workplace, listen to all their excuses as to why they are not delivering. Note them down and then go away and go your homework. Demonstrate that all the spurious excuses are not valid and work to remove the valid ones with training, resources, and mentoring.
When managing lazy staff, providing honest feedback is very helpful to them and reinforces your expectations with them. To manage lazy employees monitor their improvements through tracking their measurable output.
Finally, after going through these ways to manage lazy team members and you are seeing limited or no improvement, take formal action with the lazy employee. Put them on a Performance Improvement Plan, involve HR and finally use the disciplinary process of your company.
Don’t let lazy team members carry on being lazy. Take fair and corrective action quickly.
Good luck!
00:00 Intro
01:32 Don’t ignore lazy behaviour
02:47 Understand why the team member is lazy
04:55 Set expectations with the lazy employee
06:21 Remove all the excuses & provide training
08:02 Provide honest feedback and monitor for improvement
09:46 Take formal action if the lazy behaviour continues
11:24 In Summary
Other videos that you will find useful:
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8 Actions to Set Employee Goals That Get Results • 8 Actions to Set Emplo...
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How to Give Performance Feedback to Team Members • Why We Should Set Obje...
If you have any questions about “How to Manage Lazy Team Members” then please leave a comment below and I will get back to you.
Jess
Enhance.training
Пікірлер: 21
Reliably transform problem people impacting team performance. Don't procrastinate as people problems nearly always grow and they will impact team performance. If team performance drops, you as manager, will be negatively impacted on a personal level. To help you take action I have a course taking you through every step needed. enhance.training/lp/manage-difficult-people-csp30/
Also this is really comprehensive video. Especially the part where you talk about all the reasons the coworker might be lazy. Great stuff.
@Enhancetraining
6 ай бұрын
Glad you found the video so useful. J
There are only so many meetings you can have with a lazy employee, though.
@Enhancetraining
Жыл бұрын
Yes I agree. I adapt my approach depending on what they do or don't do. If they show no signs of changing and this is causing significant impacts in the team, then definitely cut down the meetings and move them out of the team. If they start improving, then more support can speed this process up. It is very much down to your judgement of the person and situation.
This video is really helpful. I have a team member in my team who is not able to achieve his Target on a monthly basis and I don't find that he wants to learn and new thing. He always need push to complete his tasks.
@Enhancetraining
Жыл бұрын
Glad you found the video really helpful - thanks for the feedback
Excellent video
@Enhancetraining
4 ай бұрын
Glad you liked it and found it useful. J
Hello. Any advice when multiple team members are being lazy? Example- 2 team members on their mobile devices, ignore work phone calls from other departments. Thanks.
@Enhancetraining
11 ай бұрын
I would approach each seperately and go through the steps outlined in the video. Flex how you approach each depending on how they respond. Be fair and be open and be clear about what you expect from them. If they don't respond, then you can take more formal action.
I have a new employee, who I was up front with my expectations in the interview (very little downtime/sitting, on feet all day, expected to taking initiative and show strong teamwork…etc). She was very convincing in her interview but ever since I hired her, she has been sitting around, not following her busy preceptor, not taking any initiative to help or learn. I’m very frustrated and I don’t see it improving. Since I am only 3 weeks in with this employee, do I need to give her some more chances… or how soon can I cut my losses and tell her it’s not going to work out?
@Enhancetraining
8 ай бұрын
Considering most people try to make a good impression i.e. try hard in their first weeks and months, then I would expect the behaviour to only get worse. Assuming you have given her feedback, told her you are not happy and why and there has been no change, I would cut my losses straight away. J
I need to send this to my boss
@Enhancetraining
6 ай бұрын
Good luck!
When you have to come to an employee with evidence, what are legal methods of gaining this evidence? Do you have a guideline for personal improvement plans?
@Enhancetraining
Жыл бұрын
Hi Joseph - the laws will be different in each country. In general terms if you are descretely asking for feedback from colleagues on a specific situation or reviewing a person's work and comparing to other team members output - this is, in my view, all fine. You have to be careful to maintain confidentiality - you don't want other team members becoming aware that you are collecting evidence for example. Take a look at this video for development plans kzread.info/dash/bejne/nXp-zdmwYK_df6w.html