Impact of a frustrated employee

While we have all heard of one-off extreme (and violent) reactions of a frustrated employee in office, most times things don’t reach that level and people leave. However, I have seen organizations trying to retain employees in the guise of performance even when they know that the mere presence of the frustrated employee is not good for the rest of the team. These are just some of the effects that a frustrated employee might have on others:

- Negativity – A frustrated employee is a constant cribber. He would rather see the glass half empty than half full. This becomes a habit and co-workers are fed on constant negativity and how things are bad in the organization. It takes a very mature co-worker to filter this barrage of negativity flowing round the clock.

- Going slow on work – A frustrated employee does not see value in the work he/she is doing. Hence, his/her productivity goes down and the delivery expected almost never happens on time.

- Glorifying what’s happening outside – A frustrated employee starts comparing and pointing out the perks / benefits available in other organizations vs. yours. This in turn inspires and makes other employees think that the grass is greener outside.

- Inspiring others to leave – A frustrated employee might even start helping others in their job search thereby aiming at inflicting maximum harm to the organization.

A frustrated employee aims at vitiating the atmosphere in the office. Considering the fact that we end up spending most of our awake time in office with the same set of people, is it not logical on the part of organizations to let go off such employees rather than persisting with them?

Weaving your Work Web

While I generally find seminars and classroom training programs a drab affair, I recently attended a 3 day training program where a few concepts were implementable. The trainer spoke about the complexity of the informal organization and how important it is to build your own network inside as well as outside your organization.

While this might sound obvious, its easier said than done. And the more difficult part is to track and understand how big and strong your network is. Adapted from “How to Manage” by Jo Owen, there are certain role definitions for each member in your network. Classify your contacts as follws:

Informers – Sources of vital information, trends and developments. They know what is going on, so you ought to have as many as possible.

Connectors – Open doors and connect you to others. These are people who know people. These may come from your business as well as social network.

Sponsors – People with power and influence and can be relied upon for support when required. Essential for leverage.

Promoters – are your supporters and increase your visibility by advertising your strengths

Advisors – provide guidance and feedback on your development plans (both business as well as personal).

Experts – People with specialist expertise to complement your own and can provide argument in your own area. These can also be useful when you need to get buy in from groups with a specialist background different from yours.

The classification is not as easy as I thought it was and found that there was a lot of overlap in terms of one person falling in more than one classification. However, try and keep away from one person appearing more than once.

Use the following circle to understand your own web network. This will give you an idea of who are the people you hang out with and where all you need to develop in terms of making a more intricate web of people.

We will need 3 different colored pens :

- Put your name in the centre of the circle
- Use a red line for someone who is not very critical in your web ending with the name of the person
- Use an amber line for someone who is critical to your web ending with the name of the person
- Use a green line for someone who is extremely critical to your web ending with the name of the person
- The length of the line denotes the strength of the relation you share. A name close to the circle denotes a close relation.

Once you are through with this exercise, your web might look something like this. I have omitted the names for clarity and put an initial as an example:

This gives us a clear idea of the following:

- The uniqueness of our network and the areas where we need our network to develop
- Which are the relationships that we need to work upon and are essential for our long term success
- The relationships that we take for granted and understand their criticality in our success.

Your network can be reviewed every 6 months and updated to see what progress you have made in developing your own work-wide web.

For me, my first insight was that I hardly had anyone in the Advisors box. And I have started to work on developing some of them for myself. And I also made a few calls to rejig my old boys’ network…:D

Gen Y – The Mindset Challenge!

The definition of Gen Y varies from source to source but let’s take the more generic one – the ones born in the late 80s and after. Essentially which form a large proportion of junior and middle management in most organizations.

The problem starts when we have the Baby Boomers and Gen X being part of the top management and expecting Gen Y to behave and act the same way as they did when they were in their 20s. So how do we go about resolving this imbroglio?

While there is no concrete answer as people strategies differ from culture to culture and organization to organiation, it would be best for both sides to understand that they can co-exist in a productive manner.

Some things have evolved…

- Slicker and faster presentation – Modes of presentation as well as confidence to use those modes has come a long way. So while you have Gen Y carrying presentations on their phones and making last minute changes, it’s a far cry from the printouts carried by the seniors.

- Always-on communication – with Whatsapp and Facebook messenger topping the communication list of Gen Y, information is beginning to travel to far-off places real time. So we might find a teen who is relaying what is being said in a discussion to a remote location reducing the time lag considerably.

- Reduced need for job security – The post-liberalization phase has got various types of opportunities for the new generation. After all, who would have heard of a social media marketer till a few years back.

- Need for faster gratification – Gone are the days when you could tell your team members that things would be taken care of in the next appraisal cycle. Gen Y is looking for instant gratification for their efforts and have no qualms in moving ahead if they feel that they have been shortchanged. That is why we see a large number of employees leaving without a job and not being overly concerned about finding another.

- Greater self-confidence – With more exposure and information at their fingertips, Gen Y is forever confident about themselves. They are ready to take on the most difficult of challenges at the earliest in life and are not scared of anything.

While some others have not…

- Need for recognition and differentiation – Gen Y needs to be recognized and appreciated for the work they do. And this is no different from our seniors. There has to be a clear line of sight of what they are expected to deliver and the underlying rewards.

- See value in what you do – Gen Y is very conscious of what they do and their need to bring in value to what they do is very similar to what the senior management is looking for.

- Responsibility and Ownership of work – While Gen Y maybe perceived as being obnoxious and aggressive, they are as responsible and like to maintain ownership of what they do as their predecessors.

- Need to make an impact – Gen Y wants to make an early impact in whatever they do. While the timeframe might be different, the ideology is similar to what the senior management thinks and desires.

So there are some areas where Gen Y is different, but the basic ideology is still very similar to what is desired at the top. Our management needs to understand that things/ideas/modes have evolved and channelize these energies to make the best us of them.