Managing Difficult Employees

Creating a strong team isn’t easy — no matter how strong your employees’ skills are, personalities clash. It’s your job to find a way to manage your employees, even the difficult ones. Here are three types of employees that are hard to work with and how to turn them into team players:

1. The suck-up

Every office has one: that one employee who’s only goal is impressing and garnering praise from the boss. They bring the boss coffee and offer to pick up his dry cleaning. Basically, they’re willing to do anything for a “good job,” except their actual job.

Co-workers of the suck-up are often annoyed, because they feel he is getting positive attention based on something other than the merit of his work. The rest of the team wants all the time and energy spent on flattering the boss to be diverted to getting quality work done.

As a manager, you have to show an apple-polisher that your recognition is not the most important type of acknowledgment. Take a look at your employee recognition program. Whose input affects the achievements that are most celebrated? Incorporate a peer-to-peer recognition program as a way to encourage suck-ups to consider the approval of their co-workers as well. Soon they’ll begin to realize that doing a good job and contributing to the team is appreciated by everyone, and that their peers’ praise can be as rewarding as yours.

2. The gossip

Not all forms of gossip are detrimental to a group. 2014 research from Stanford University found that groups that participated in gossip cooperated better due to higher levels of accountability. But when you have an employee that spends half of the day whispering about everyone’s weekend plans, you’ve got a problem.

Everyone is guilty of gossiping now and again, but “the office gossip” distracts the rest of her co-workers by constantly talking about others’ personal lives. Spreading rumors or deeply personal pieces of information can create tensions within a team.

The key to managing these types of employees is to redirect their social tendencies. Talkative people are social butterflies at heart. Give them projects that are geared towards creating interactions, like planning company retreats or holiday parties. These tasks will keep them busy — and keep them from distracting co-workers with unprofessional chatter. During these events, they’ll have an appropriate time to talk about non-business related topics and will be rewarded by seeing how their productive efforts have brought the team closer.

3. The underachiever

Sometimes you hire an employee that has a stellar resume and all the right experience, only to see him repeatedly perform below his potential. You were counting on him to act as an example for the rest of the team, but he just does the bare minimum on every task or project he’s responsible for every day.

Instead of being inspired by this anticipated high performer, other team members also begin to do less. Those employees that continue to go the extra mile resent the underachiever for having to pick up the slack.

If you’re confident that an employee has more to give, there’s a disconnect between you somewhere. Perhaps the actual day-to-day job he’s doing isn’t what he expected it’d be, or maybe he’s just bored. Talk to the underachiever to find out what he likes and what he doesn’t like about his job. Find out if he needs more challenging work to motivate him, or if he feels he’s not being given the opportunity to use his strongest skills. This will allow you to redefine his position so he can flourish like you always knew he could.

Understand Recruitment Cycles to Give Your Job Search an Edge

When it comes to connecting with the right job opportunity, timing isn’t everything, but it’s certainly something. Tuning into industries’ and employers’ annual recruitment cycles just might give you a decisive edge.

That’s the consensus of recruiters and employers with fingers on the pulse of seasonal variations in hiring. Here’s a quarter-by-quarter summary of how these hiring dynamics play out.

First Quarter: A New Year’s Wave of Hiring

Sometimes peaks of hiring correspond with workplace factors that are only loosely related, like when people take vacation.

Major hiring initiatives may follow close on the heels of the holidays and summer.

Strong hiring periods like the first quarter, when demand for talent may outweigh the supply of qualified candidates, may be a good time to go for a job with more responsibility or higher pay.

Second Quarter: Gearing Up for Summer

For those whose livelihood depends substantially on fair weather, spring is when hiring peaks. In the construction industry, hiring in April, May and June proceeds at double the pace of December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

Tourism and hospitality hiring is also very strong in the spring. And businesses looking to hire professional workers before fall often do so now, before key decision makers start rotating out for summer vacation.

Third Quarter: Recruiters Relax a Bit, and Vacation Plays a Role

Hiring slows down in July before picking up at the end of August. For those with nontraditional but impressive employment backgrounds, there’s an advantage to looking in relatively slow hiring months like July and December, says Smith.

For example, recruiters, less pressed for time than in peak months, may be willing to take a longer look at an experienced professional woman seeking to return to work after taking years off to care for children.

Fourth Quarter: A Rush, Then a Lull

The fourth quarter presents the most complex hiring dynamics of the year, with its mix of fall activity, holiday retail hiring, Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s slowdown, and end-of-year financial and budget maneuvering.

Although December hiring is at low levels in many industries, recruiters are determined to fill the year’s remaining openings by December 31, and the supply of applicants dwindles as Christmas and the new year approach.

Major industries classified as information, financial services, and professional and business services, having hired heavily in the second quarter, see their lowest level of hiring in December, says JOLTS.

But December isn’t as slow as it used to be, say some observers. And applications tend to slow down during the holiday season more than openings do — tipping the balance in favor of those who do apply.