5 Creative Ways To Deal With Disruptive Employees

While most employees will regulate their behavior on the job, not all will. In fact, some will actively go out of their way to make your life as difficult as possible, causing problems where there is no need to cause problems. 

Disruptive members of staff aren’t just a nuisance, though. They can get very expensive. Dealing with them takes time and energy you could direct elsewhere, increasing your productivity and pushing your business forwards. 

In this post, we take a look at some creative ways to deal with disruptive employees and help get your business back on track. 

Start Paying More Attention To Them

When an employee starts acting out, many leaders simply stop paying attention to them, hoping that their behavior will die down. However, that rarely happens. In many cases, it just gets worse over time. The employee doesn’t believe that you’re interested in helping them, so they become even more antagonistic towards the firm. 

If you want to stop disruptive behavior, you need to probe more deeply and find out what the problem actually is. The more you can delve into their role and find out what’s going on, the greater your ability to develop creative solutions that deal with the underlying issue successfully. Call them for an informal chat to find out what’s going on for them. 

Be Clear About What You Want

If that strategy doesn’t work, talk to the disruptive employee about what you want from them. Be honest about their behavior and give them a shock so that they change their ways. If they’re causing problems, talk about the impact that it is having on the rest of the business. 

Remain Professional

Always speak to employees professionally, not from your personal emotion. Treat your interactions as a process, even if you feel like screaming sometimes. Staying in a professional frame of mind helps you get to a resolution with the employee faster. 

If necessary, engage in drug and alcohol testing. Find out whether the employee’s bad behavior is being driven by substances banned under company policy. This way, you can start gathering powerful reasons to fire them from their job that employment tribunals can’t contest. 

Track Their Progress

Disruptive employees don’t usually want to listen to what they should do. But it is important for leadership to track their progress over time and then reward them for making improvements. 

If showing up late is an issue, start keeping tabs on when the problem employee actually arrives. If they’re only late once per month instead of every other day, that’s a significant improvement. 

Tell Them What Will Happen If They Don’t Improve

Lastly, if a disruptive employee won’t listen to reason, tell them the consequences of failing to improve. Give them a date by which you expect a change in their behavior. If they can’t do it, kick them out of their current position and give them some work that they can do. If that option isn’t available, ask them to leave for good.