You’d like to think that every one of your employees handles your customers, products, and business with the same level of care that you do. This, of course, is not a reality. No one will ever care as much as you do. However, it is reasonable to expect employees to show some care.
Caring employees will handle your business with respect and go the extra mile when it is called for. Employees who don’t care, on the other hand, can sabotage your best efforts.
Here are some ways to spot employees who could care less:
- Show up late, leave early.
- Do a sloppy job.
- Miss deadlines.
- Spend too much time at the coffee pot, etc.
- Bad phone etiquette.
- Constantly taking personal phone calls, emails, texts, etc.
- Not performing up to speed.
- Unengaged in meetings.
These are just a few red flags, and some of them could also have other meanings. Sometimes, people just don’t know better and have to be taught. But when an employee has been told, and still has a disregard for the business, you need to act sooner rather than later.
The “I don’t care!”s can hurt you no matter where they are coming from. In the end, it will all get back to the customer, whether through shoddy packaging, a defective product, bad customer service, a non-responsive sales rep, and more. You need to nip them in the bud.
In some cases, you can fix the problem. Take the initiative and sit down with the individual. Find out what is going on. As I stated before, maybe the employee just doesn’t know any better. Maybe they are not engaged because they are bored. Maybe they are overwhelmed with their job and need more training or a position move. In some cases, they just need to know that you care enough to give them a kick in the butt.
There are other cases. If the employee is obstinate and unwilling to change, even after you have talked to him, you are going to need to let him go. You may think you can just let it pass if it is something small. But consider what something tiny, like an employee being 5 minutes late every day, means to your business as a whole. Sure, maybe your production isn’t hurt too much by this. But what about your employee morale. What do other employees think when they see one person getting a free pass? The “I don’t care”‘s can spread like a virus. And even those people who would never dream of doing anything to hurt your company will start to develop bad attitudes that will eventually spill out. First, they will be mad at the individual. Eventually, they will grow frustrated with you that you are doing nothing about it. From there, they will quickly start to resent their job.
You don’t need any of this. You have to deal with employees who don’t care. If you can’t get them to care, you need to let them go. If you don’t, it shows that you don’t care, and that is a road that you do not want to go down.
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Bradford Shimp loves to solve business problems. Email Bradford with your business problem to see what he thinks. Follow Bradford on Twitter.
