How To Deal With an Employee with a Negative Attitude

Having a negative minded employee in your company or business is sometimes is inevitable, however, it is the responsibility of you as the employer or manager to handle the employee as a negative employee can infect a team with negativity faster than you can imagine. Listed below, are some of the basic steps you can take to deal with an employee with a negative mindset.

1. Have a one-on-one discussion with the employee . The first step is to call up the employee, let him/her know about the negative impact on other coworkers that might arise as a result of his/her negativity.Discuss with a clear and honest mind and avoid being defensive, do not take the employees words or attitude personally; as the employees words are not directed towards you.
2. Listen to his/her story. Ask the employee is there is any negative occurrence in her personal life which might be affecting her participation in the workplace; as problems like divorces, death of a family member etc.
   Discussing this with an employee with a negative attitude might cause him/her to loosen up and let things flow.
3. If you can’t seem to guess the cause of the negativity, ask the employee for the cause, do not try to play a guessing game with him/her as it might even deepened the negative mindset of the employee.
   Listen to the employee’s problems, it might be from the workplace or from their personal life, some reasons might be legitimate while some you might not be able to comprehend, but at the end, try not to give a comment that will do worse damage.
4. Focus on creating solutions with the employee; do not try to address everything that is wrong and negative about the employee’s actions. Try to suggest ways or solutions that can help the employee have a more positive attitude or morale.
5. Dealing with an employee with a negative attitude might sometimes go the other way. In cases where the employee is unwilling to have a discussion with you, do not force it, try to move to a more conventional method or approach, which can be by complimenting the employee after a job well done, interacting with the employee with a positive vibe, try not to heap blames on the employee.

Some employees might tend to be hard minded and decides to keep all their problems in them, being good and having a positive attitude towards your employees might be another way to help smoothing and prevent negative attitude. Identifying a negative employee might or might not be easy at different instances, some might choose to put on a smiling face, while some will exhibit ignorant attitude.

But the main thing to watch out for is the employee’s interaction with his or her co-workers, the employee’s work rate and success rate, how fast does he/she gets things done compared to now, are they depreciating?

Conducting an effective performance appraisal might be another way to know which of your employees exhibits a negative attitude. Check out our article on the importance of an effective performance appraisal to understand how an effective appraisal can help fish out negativity in the company. For further information, please don’t hesitate on contact us at +603 2303 9516 or email us at connect@ihr2u.com