How Employees Can Ruin Company Culture

This article comes from Entrepreneur.

A Few Disgruntled Employees Can Destroy Your Company Culture

Disgruntled employees can pose a risk to your company by providing poor service — thus turning customers off — and they can create a negative work environment by creating stress and disharmony within the workgroup.

Some disgruntled employees may purposely set out to cause trouble with unethical behavior, ranging from spreading rumors to stealing money and equipment.

Let’s look at how disgruntled employees impact your operation and how to approach their impact in a constructive manner:

Productivity decline, hostile work environment, and misappropriation of resources.

Unhappy, disgruntled employees can create a tense, negative and stressful atmosphere in the workplace, which affects the overall productivity of the team. These same employees can cause a hostile work environment.

They are a drain on managers because managers, in turn, have to waste their time dealing with and resolving the problems they cause. Disgruntled employees can destroy a company’s culture by the misappropriation of essential company resources as well.

There are several ways to fix company culture by addressing the causes of disgruntlement, but all of the strategies require the supervisor’s leadership and teamwork. Here are some key ways to do so.

Keep your employees actively engaged and productive.

If disgruntled employees can influence the feelings of and cause other employees to become disgruntled, productive employees can help “turn the table” and negate the influences of disgruntled employees.

Ways to energize and motivate employees include acknowledging their successes, providing both career growth opportunities and financial incentives, supporting work-life balance, encouraging goodwill between employees, engaging them in work-related social activities and maintaining a team positive atmosphere.

Determine the cause of their issues and address them.

Open a dialogue with the disgruntled employees and determine their true concern, what their issues are and how you can help them resolve or get a better handle on them.

Disgruntlement among employees can stem from various reasons, including perceived disrespectful treatment, need for recognition, a culture of favoritism, poor performance evaluations, negative office interactions with peers and management staff, sexual harassment, lack of financial opportunities, or even limited career growth opportunity and domestic and health issues.

Company culture influences employee performance and customer perception, both affect the company’s reputation. Making sure that the company strives to maintain a positive culture diminishes disgruntlement among employees, but when it does happen, you should make sure to immediately address the issue so that it doesn’t destroy the inner workings and character of your company.

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