Employees’ work and personal habits may not be significant enough to determine the firm’s success or failure, but they warrant attention.
It’s those small things that drive down the morale of any business, says practice management consultant Dr. Rhonda Savage who heads Miles Global in Gig-Harbor, WA.
They also drive down the administrator’s morale. Here she tells how to deal with six of the most irritating of irritants.
1. Cell phones and the Internet
First are cell phones and personal Internet use.
Estimates are that employers lose an average of 8½ hours a week in productivity to cell phone calls alone, Savage says. They are today’s “greatest time embezzler.”
Text messaging is almost addictive. People are obsessed with it. They interrupt whatever they are doing to read a text.
Besides the time spent texting and talking, the loss of concentration means the staffer has to take additional time to readjust and get back to the work.
Personal Internet use is just as time-consuming. Employees waste hours on doing nothing more than playing games and shopping.
To anybody who claims there’s no productivity loss to those two factors, her response is to think of how much anybody can get done in two hours with no interruptions.
The solution: “Cell phone use during business hours should be 100% forbidden,” she says.
To end the Internet misuse, some companies put in security locks to prevent access to social media sites such as Facebook. Others monitor employees’ Internet use and discipline people who access sites that don’t pertain to work.
Without some type of restriction, she says, Internet use simply expands, and the people who don’t waste time with it become resentful of those who do “and lose respect for the boss for not doing anything about it.”
She adds, however, that what’s good for the manager is good for the staff. If the manager talks on a cell phone and does personal business over the Internet, there’s no reason why staff shouldn’t do the same.
2. A bad personal presentation
Then there’s the staffer who turns everybody off with irritating personal habits—gum chewing, not making eye contact, interrupting, and using slang such as “you know” and “like” and “I mean.”
The solution: The solution is ongoing, Savage says. Make communication education part of staff meetings.
Cover listening skills and discuss points such as not interrupting the other person, not finishing somebody else’s sentences, how to ask questions to keep someone talking, why not to chew gum, how to make eye contact, and how to paraphrase what someone says to double-check the message.
Have staff do role-playing to show how not to talk on the phone or in person, perhaps one person acting as a receptionist who doesn’t look up while another plays a client standing there “watching her part her hair.”
Talk about what works and what doesn’t work, and to make it fun, have prizes for the best role-playing.
Another solution is to have staff draw up an email customer service survey to give to clients that asks questions such as whether calls are answered promptly, if the receptionist is courteous, and if staff are helpful and understand client needs.
Let the email come from the staff and make it informal such as “will you give us two minutes of your time? We’d really appreciate your help.”
When talking about personal habits, always phrase the remarks in terms of “this will make a huge difference in your career.”
Point out that with gum chewing, people focus on the gum and not the eyes, and the lack of eye contact makes the gum chewer think the other person isn’t listening. Or point out that behavior such as fidgeting or playing with a pencil shows lack of confidence.
Whatever the item, Savage recommends you “take it back to how it affects their job performance.”
3. The messy desk
Few people are neat and organized by nature, Savage says. The rest have to work at it. But in an office environment, everybody has to make the effort.
A clean desk does more than make the office look good. It keeps papers from getting lost.
It also gives clients confidence in the firm. When a secretary’s desk is a disaster, any client is going to think “how can they take care of my legal matter when the office is such a mess?”
The solution: Explain to the employee why the desk needs to be clean, for example, “when I pass by your desk I notice that it’s messy, and I am concerned that you might lose documents and negatively affect a client’s case. And that would negatively impact our business.”
Then give the employee an hour or more to do nothing but organize the desk.
If the mess reappears, it’s a matter of “we’ve talked about this before, and this is what I need you to do. I am going to give you 30 days to change, or you will need to find a new position.”
She points out that it’s important to explain why the manager is asking for the change—that the behavior is affecting the office and the client.
4. One-upmanship
It’s irritating when somebody has to best what other people say. Staffer A says “I was able to get a client to sign our contract” and Staffer One-Up has to say “I did that with another client and got more money.”
The solution: Again, focus on how the behavior hinders career potential. Tell Staffer One-Up “My intention is to help you be the best paralegal in this department, so I want to share something with you that is affecting your ability to be that. When you talk with someone, you always have to add something to trump that person, and that devalues what that person has just shared with you.
“I don’t want you to lose your connection with the clients or the people here in the office. If you make an effort to stop that, it will make a big difference in the way people feel about you and also in how clients accept your recommendations.”
Explain that doing well requires teamwork, and besting people is not being a team member.
5. Bad breath and body odor
Either is a sensitive topic, but any grooming issue has to be addressed quickly, Savage says. Let it continue and it affects performance, because the other staff don’t want to be around it. It can even offend the clients.
The solution: Many times a manager approaches that type of situation obliquely with a general message about the importance of hygiene. “And the entire group knows it’s that one person,” while that one person misses the message.
It takes a private conversation—a sensitive one. Start out on a positive note and show the manager is on the staffer’s side: “You are one of our most valuable employees. I don’t want to offend you. But my intention is for you to be extremely successful, and there is one thing that is hindering your success.”
Then admit to the difficulty of the conversation: “I wasn’t sure how to approach you about this, but if it’s okay I’d like to share it with you.”
According to Savage, the staffer will invariably say to continue, “because everybody wants to be successful.” And once that permission is given, the door is open to frank communication, she says. So be frank.
Describe the problem and ask the staffer how it might be corrected and if the office can help in any way.
If possible, be helpful. If it’s obvious the staffer has gum disease, a brochure from a dental office could be “a huge kindness.”
6. Not following through
Nothing is more annoying to a manager than to ask a staffer to do something and later have to ask where it is, only to hear “I haven’t gotten to it yet.”
The solution: Savage recommends you tell the unreliable staffer to carry a notepad, and say, “when I ask you to do something, I want you to write it down.“
The manager also has to mark it on a calendar.
Then set a specific deadline: “I want you to come to my office Thursday at 3 p.m. to tell me what’s going on with your assignment.”
And, she says, set the deadline time early enough so that if it turns out the staffer has done absolutely nothing, there’s still time to get it done.
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