The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

It is said that every person is unique in their own way, but the term ‘unique’ is sometimes misleading. The truth is that everyone of us has come across unpleasant people of various types and degrees in our personal and profession lives, and I bet you won’t like to call them unique (jerks, perhaps?!).

The worst is when you happen to be unlucky enough to deal with these people in a professional setting, because unlike your personal life, you cannot hope to just ignore them and get on with it. In fact, chances are you are working with them in a team or worse still, working under them. Our attempt is to present to you five types of the most troubling, and unfortunately, also the kinds that you are very likely to encounter.

We know there are many more than just these five kinds – people who can become a reason for a severe case of headache; but we’re presenting the kinds that’ll make you exclaim – “hey, I know a guy who’s just like that”.

So write to us and let us know if you know someone like this, share names if you dare – we promise not to publish your feedback if you don’t want us to…

The Intimidator

This person does not want to listen to what you have to say, ever. All he is interested in is getting the work done, his way, and it definitely does not bother him if he has to push some people around or act in an abrasive manner in the process of doing so. Some of them do this because they (genuinely) really want to get work done as they see it as the first priority, but then there are different types here. One of them is also a person who gets his sense of identity by belittling others on a regular basis, which is an unhealthy mindset to say the least. People who come in contact with pushovers more often than not end up losing motivation and consequently their zeal for work.

If you come across people of this kind, catch them in a weak moment (yes, they have them too), or just when you’ve wowed them with a task done ahead of time (push yourself, you can finish a task ahead of time, even with their deadlines), and tell them that you’re losing it (they love it when they hear that they’ve driven someone around the bend, especially the second kinds – it makes them feel closer to being God, which is what they want to be, in their subconscious mind), and that they’re the only ones who can save you from a breakdown. They love to help. With the first kinds, talk to them about how you also value time, and will stop at nothing to get the task accomplished, and that you’re all tense yourself while the task is WIP. If they know that you share the urgency, they’ll lay off slowly. Needless to say, you need to build credibility by achieving tasks within deadlines first.

The Chit Chatter

The ‘chit chatter’ just loves to talk. The amount of damage they can inflict on your company depends entirely on the kind of ‘chit chat’ they indulge in. For some it could just be an innocent one hour discourse on ‘how bad the traffic was today’ or maybe ‘how awesome was a party they went to’, the only problem is that while they satisfy in their compulsive need to talk, they never realize their it’s on the company’s expense; add a few listeners into the picture and you imagine what it does to the business. But still these people do not cause half the damage as the type that indulge in spreading baseless disparaging rumours or malicious content about the company or about someone in particular. There you have a real problem!

While everyone must have their moments of relaxation, if you are beginning to feel that the chit-chat is coming in the way of productivity, or if it is otherwise damaging, put a stop to it immediately. The first step is to discourage being a part of their mindless chatter group – act as if you’ve suddenly remembered something that needs your urgent attention and rush off, leaving the chatterbox in the middle of the sentence. Play and beat them at their own game – act conspiratorial with your colleagues and tell them that you overheard someone in the senior management saying the productivity of this section was falling and/or not what it should be; wonder out loud if the gossiping has anything to do with it. For subordinates, tell them on their face that they need to concentrate more on work; for seniors, tell their seniors that the constant chatting is a distraction that is not allowing you to concentrate and therefore, coming in the way of productivity.

The Disinterested Lazy Bum

They do not care at all about anything that they are paid to have interest in, and their motto is ‘work in progress’. If somehow they do manage to get some work done, they will sit around growing old instead of asking for more work themselves. These people are perhaps the most difficult to manage because you can never expect any kind of feedback or level of interest from them, something very similar to asking a wall – “can this be done?” or worse instructing it to “work on an idea for the pitch”. There could be any number of reasons for such kind of behaviour like just being a plain lazy slob by nature, in which case there is not much hope. Lack of working knowledge about their role could be a factor for their behaving in this manner, this can be rectified by appropriate training. Be aware that something may be bothering them at work or at home that has made them lose interest in work altogether.

This one is a tough one to crack. The best approach is to talk to them and figure out where is the source of this laziness. If it is something that can be rectified, or will rectify itself with time, let them be – everyone has good and bad phases in life. But if you’re convinced it’s an attitude problem, call a team meeting and let them know that some people have to work extra hard so that they can make up for a team member with a lazy attitude – let them figure it out and let them find an answer. If the lazy guy is a team mate, let him know that it’s unfair for others to have to shoulder additional work, or that he’s acting more like a bottleneck than an enabler. When you’ve tried everything, and nothing works, maybe it’s time for that guy to move on.

The Timid Kitten

Instructing someone what to do is not always enough, like you would like to believe. Sometimes you have to also explain how to do it with excruciating detail, the timid kitten is a gentle unassuming person who only has one real problem, which is that he needs to be supervised on an hourly basis (minute basis in worst cases). In most cases this condition of the person stems from their apprehension of getting it wrong. Even if you know they won’t, you literally have to hold their hands and guide them through work. These are the sort of people whom you sometimes have to teach a task over and over again. Although good in their intentions, this method of working can really get on the nerves of the supervisor, and the fact that he has a busy schedule does not help.

The only way to handle this guy is to refuse to help – point blank – even if it seems rude. If someone has to be micromanaged, the overhead that he brings to the business is probably not worth anyone’s while. Train and coach people, build their confidence, never spoonfeed. Constantly required attention is not only bad for the supervisor’s calendar, it is also a roadblock on the learning curve of the timid kitten. Since these guys are well meaning from within, don’t take any drastic decisions about their tenure in the organisation, all that they need is space, confidence and the ability to accomplish a task. Coach them, and they’ll surprise you over a period of time. They are also the most loyal folks, if you help them gain confidence in themselves. No-one can forget the fact that you helped them rise in their own esteem, and they’ll go to any length to stand by you in tough times.

The Thoroughly Incompetent

You have no idea how they got here, or what they are doing, or even why they are the way they are. They have no idea why they are here or what they have to do; it’s a pretty hopeless scenario to be looking at. You know there has been wrong somewhere because they are incapable of performing the simplest of tasks related to their domain, an analogy could be a professional photographer asking where the click button is. You really can’t do much in this situation except hope for a miracle and invest in some training… but will they be receptive to that, which, given the situation seems highly unlikely. Wait, do they know what training means?

Gently, ask them to make a move – they’ll probably find their true calling, and will thank you for it later.

The most successful organizational change programs are the ones that are supported by sound information and solid facts. Though ESS or employee satisfaction surveys have been around for a long time now, it was only recently that the “engagement” buzzword caught on, and how! Let’s take a look at the fundamental differences between engagement and satisfaction surveys and their process of administration. As you will find out, they are most definitely not the same things.

Follow up Machinery:

Brief the senior management based about the strong points and the areas of development of the organization by conducting a normative analysis of the survey results

Share the survey results with the management team and the employee via e-mail and employee meetings

Finalize on the improvement areas and create an itemized action plan based on it

Select the team responsible for implementing the action plan including team leaders and managers, providing specific training where required

Regularly track the progress of the action plan and share the information with the senior management

Pitfalls in execution:

Design and implementation pitfalls:

What do you want from the survey?

The first step of any survey is to objectively arrive at the purpose of the survey. Whether it is to prove a hypothesis, predict future behavior or assess a current scenario, it must be stated clearly and concisely beforehand.

During questionnaire design:

• Questions not aligned with the study objective in mind
• Including lengthy, biased, difficult or ambiguous questions
• Questionnaire not sufficiently reviewed before being circulated
• Pre-testing not performed, this may result in a lot of “don’t know/not sure” responses to potentially confusing or lengthy questions

During Sample selection:

• Unnecessarily increasing sample size to compensate for “less responses”; for example it is better to have 260 people responding out of 300 than 5500 out of 10000.
• Using non-probability sampling where actually probability sampling is required
• Employees not kept in the loop while selecting a sample, resulting in a feeling of resentment amongst those not included in the sample

During data Processing:

• Skipping step to save time can negatively impact the usefulness of the survey
• Counterintuitive results or impossible/inconsistent answers are not cross-checked
• Weak non-responder policy/execution can result in a flawed survey outcome

Other Pitfalls:

• Inefficient follow-up action – A loosely implemented action plan can spell complete wastage of resources as the survey will have little or no impact on the employee satisfaction, engagement or performance; the survey is thus reduced to obscure piece of information.
• Disinterested workers – The fate of a survey is majorly pre-decided by the level of interest employee’s display towards it, a survey of disinterested people cannot result in anything interesting. Therefore it is essential to take the employees into confidence by communication exercises before the commencement of the survey so as to explain the nature and scope of the survey.
• Confidentiality not ensured – Responses tend to be biased if confidentially is not expressly ensured by the survey administrators and the management, because all participants tend to select the ‘most appropriate answer’ instead of the ‘factual answer’. While communicating this it should be made clear that the purpose of the survey is not to judge the employees but to judge the factors affecting the organization.
• Unrealistic employee expectation of the survey – Employers as a rule should avoid asking question on the areas where they do not want and/or do not see any scope for change; this is not only purposeless but also tends to unnecessarily raise employee expectations eventually leading to resentment.

*THE payback is that for every 10 percent improvement in engagement, the company reaps an increase in the employee’s effort level by 6 percent, according to the Hay Group, a Philadelphia-based survey firm.