Office Sabotage
Celeste Blackburn SPHR
248 Posts
I just finished reading[URL="http://blogs.hrhero.com/oswaldletters/2011/05/26/eproductivity-wounded-in-employee-feud-crossfire/"] Dan's latest post on his blog [I]The Oswald Letters[/I] [/URL]where he addresses employees who don't get along with each other. Towards the end of the post, he asks:
[INDENT]So what do you do when you have two employees — both talented contributors — who can’t stand each other but their jobs require them to work together? You can’t make them like each other, but you can demand that they find a way to work together productively. And if they either actively or passively refuse?
[/INDENT]Personally, I've never worked in a office where employees dislike for each other actually hurt their work. Sure, there have been plenty of people I didn't like, but I've never seen it cause a huge problem. In his post, Dan says he's seen employee dislike degenerate into sabotage.
Have you ever had to deal with an employee feud that got out of hand? How do you handle it?
Celeste
[INDENT]So what do you do when you have two employees — both talented contributors — who can’t stand each other but their jobs require them to work together? You can’t make them like each other, but you can demand that they find a way to work together productively. And if they either actively or passively refuse?
[/INDENT]Personally, I've never worked in a office where employees dislike for each other actually hurt their work. Sure, there have been plenty of people I didn't like, but I've never seen it cause a huge problem. In his post, Dan says he's seen employee dislike degenerate into sabotage.
Have you ever had to deal with an employee feud that got out of hand? How do you handle it?
Celeste
Comments
Of the productivity-killing feuds you've seen over the years, have ALL of them involved female employees? Because all of mine have. I am aware of a situation that occurred here several years before my arrival that involved two men, but I wasn't here for it. It's not something I've seen in person, at any place I've been.
Most of our feuds have involved subtle, passive-aggressive behaviors but I have seen it turn into sabotage. I think the most creative one was the supervisor who was feuding with the other supervisor in her department, so she went around encouraging all of that person's employees to look for other jobs and quit. She would also call me and drop little "hints" that the other person was doing a terrible job. I think she thought that if she could talk everyone into leaving, and also get HR on her side, then upper management would think it was all the other person's fault and fire her.
1) Use our EAP for mediation with the parties.
2) Have them sign an agreement (last-chance if necessary) that their behavior cannot negatively affect the workplace or their coworkers.
Sometimes successful, sometimes not!
Thanks for saving Frank, cnghr. 90% of my workforce are men, so the majority of my conflicts involve men. And here I thought it was because little boys just never really grow up.:angel:
Oh, I agree about little boys not growing up, Joannie...I've seen more than enough silliness and frat-boy type behavior out of the guys around here to reinforce that, although luckily it doesn't generally turn into conflict or feuding.
As a woman, what disappoints me is how many women I've worked with haven't really grown up either. The petty, nasty, "mean girl" type behavior that should have ended in junior high or high school is still alive and well. One supervisor was venting about the amount of time she had to spend dealing with squabbles or outright feuds among her all-female department and she said "I'd just like to supervise grown-ups for a change." I reminded her that every one of the women who worked for her was over 45 years old!