A Few Disgruntled Employees Can Destroy Your Company Culture

The first step to dealing with unhappy employees is finding if their complaints are valid.

Unhappy or disgruntled employees can damage your company’s culture, resulting in a poor or hostile work environment which often translates to reduced profit margins and dispirited employees.

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 work group.

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 causes of disgruntlement, but all of the strategies require the supervisor’s leadership and teamwork. 

Here are some key ways to do so.

1. 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 to 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.

When employees are acknowledged and their good performances are rewarded financially and professionally, they will be predisposed to being gratified and productive. Also, work-life balance is important to today’s employees. They must have time for their career, family and social life. When friendships and goodwill between employees are established, the positive-minded employees can provide support and encouragement to disgruntled employees.

Focusing on an employee’s strengths shows you have trust in them, which motivates them because their efforts are acknowledged. This allows you to keep the atmosphere positive.

2. 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, culture of favoritism, poor performance evaluations, negative office interactions with peers and management staff, sexual harassment, lack of financial opportunities, and even limited career growth opportunity.

Disrespectful behaviors by superiors and/or subordinates generally create negative feelings among employees. Lack of recognition can make employees feel underappreciated. A culture of favoritism and poor performance evaluations can give the impression that hard work is not appreciated. 

Work-related issues such as office bullying, sexual harassment and unsafe workplaces can lead to emotional distress, under-performance and negative comments on social media. Lack of financial and career growth opportunities can cause disgruntlement since they also serve as recognition for working hard.

When these issues are identified, you can help your employees find the best ways to address them.

3. Ensure That Employees Are a Right-Fit for Their Job

Regardless of the efforts you make in recognizing your employees and providing them with incentives, if employees’ interests and goals don’t match the company’s mission and vision, they are a misfit for the job. The best way to avoid the effects of disgruntled employees is to ensure that employees fit the company culture during the hiring process.

Edited by: 浪子

Bibliography

Richard Trevino II. (2018). A Few Disgruntled Employees Can Destroy Your Company Culture. 
Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/319065