You will be forced to apologize when you say not all business professionals are sensible and rational, but that could be true to some extent and managers, firm owners, CPAs, and HR professionals can agree with you in this.
Every firm or business owner will tell you that dealing with difficult employees can be a complex duty but it cannot be avoided. You need to be an expert; else you will find yourself being held hostage by disruptive employees and hence waste precious time you could have directed to other productive things in the organization.
Note that a difficult employee is not only a problem to the departmental managers, but also other employees and can make a huge distraction to the entire accounting firm or business.
But if firm owners can know how to handle difficult accountants or employees properly, team productivity can never be affected.
In this article, EasyEssay shares the seven best ways managers can deal with difficult employees effectively.
So we will not waste your time but we’ll get directly to the point.
Do Your Homework
First things first, you need to find out what’s making you feel that the employee is difficult. Well, several issues that could make you label the employee as difficult. Perhaps they are not performing as it is required or is not participating in meetings, etc.
You need to find out on your own and if possible ask for inputs from other employees. Sometimes you will be obliged to write an outline of the things you want to communicate or even ask help from your Human Resource manager, especially if you are a team manager. You know you are looking for ways on how to help this particular difficult employee. Use all avenues possible before the situation gets out of hand.
Approach the employee calmly and explain to them the difficulty whether it’s behavioral or performance issue. Your goal here is to help the employee understand why you are concerned about their behavior and if you had already laid down the performance expectations of the organization, the better.
Don’t Ignore the Problem
You may think that by ignoring the problem, it will soon go away, but it may even get worse and affect the performance of other employees of the organization. You need to be bold enough to face the employee, and explain the problem to them so that you can solve it.
Remember, if you face the employee in question, you also make your team know that you don’t tolerate poor performance or negative staff members.
Face the Employee and Listen
You want to know the problem so that you can find ways of solving it, so you want to give your employee a chance to speak. Ask them questions but don’t probe.
“The best way to deal with a difficult employee is to ask questions, listen, then decide what to do next”, says Hellen Mathews, an HR manager at Essay Writing Lab, one of the best essay-writing services that offer business essay and cheap assignment help to students in the UK. So if you decide you are not listening to what they are saying, you will not find the root cause of the problem and you will leave it unsolved.
There could be issues that are making the employee not perform well and to remedy the situation, you need to have a discussion with them and give them a chance to speak their side.
According to a study by BestEssayTips, a custom coursework writing service, sometimes employees start to get difficult because they feel their input is not being valued or they feel like they are going through a certain situation because of someone, and who knows it could be you.
Once you give them your ears, they will feel valued and hence can change their behavior for the betterment of the organization.
Listening may bring out a lot of issues that have stayed unnoticed for many years and solving them could benefit the organization tremendously.
Do Your Own Observation
Once you have faced the difficult employee in question, don’t rush to handle the situation. Do your own observation; gather facts as much as you can. For instance, you could give the employee time to see whether their behavior will change or whether they are also struggling to change. Sometimes the problem could be personal and the employee may change once you have discussed the issue with them.
Offer Feedback Positively
Oftentimes managers will complain about the performance of their employees but will not give feedback about how they want things done differently. Sometimes as a manager, you are required to give tough feedback and that’s a tough thing to do for most managers.
However, even though you intend to give your employees negative feedback, you need to do it constructively. Avoiding making it too personal.
Positively give feedback way and ensure to provide your employee with way on how to improve and become productive- you need to keep their confidence in the process.
And if it’s something general, then you need to gather all your team members and address the issue then provide them with ways to do things according to the organization’s standards.
Provide Solutions
In your discussion, your main aim is to understand the problem then provide a solution and not to punish the difficult employee- unless punishment is necessary.
Sometimes providing a solution could bring the employee back on track and the organization to move ahead. After all, you are their leader and it’s your responsibility to provide solutions to problems.
You can use this opportunity to provide coaching to your employees so that they can learn and grow. If you are discussing the problem with the whole team, it’s the best time to ask their ideas on solving the problem.
It’s easier for them to support ideas they bring on board. Although their ideas may not be good, owning their ideas could make them implement them fast than what you could suggest to them. But you can always add your views on top of their ideas if you feel their ideas won’t work.
Write Down Key Points
It’s also important to write down key points that come up in the discussion. If there is a need for employee training, you need to make sure that you are documenting it so that you know the steps to take to help the employee in question. Livecareer can help you know how to document key points by the way.
Lastly, List Possible Consequences
If the problem isn’t serious, you do not need to set consequences. But if the matter is serious, then you need to make your accountants/employees know what to expect in case such things happen again.
Don’t forget to end the discussion in a positive note. Express your confidence that what you’ve discussed will work and wish them well.
As velvetjobs puts it, dealing with difficult employees isn’t going to be easy; however, as manager or accounting firm owner, it’s your duty to ensure all things go as expected. And we hope the ideas we have shared above will help accountants, accounting firm owners, and HR managers to know how to address things before they become serious.
Author Bio: Scott Mathews is a freelance journalist and academic writer who offer custom coursework writing service . He also helps students with their college homework help , research paper, and dissertation papers. Besides, he is the author of coursework writing service review and a contributor to the AustralianWritings blog. Scott is also a community health expert who likes spending his free time visiting his neighborhood community, offering them health advice.