Negative employees in AEC firms can undermine management, leading to declining morale, productivity, and company performance.
There is a cancer that exists in so many established AEC businesses that no one talks about. That cancer is the negative, cynical, skeptical employee (or employees) who undermine management on a daily basis.
When combined with kind and good-natured, non-confrontational firm management – management that has limited confidence in their own abilities as businesspeople, and who do everything they can to avoid cutting anyone from their team – you end up with a company staffed by people who do the least amount they have to to keep their jobs and one that performs poorly in terms of profitability and growth.
The longer you have been in business, the greater the likelihood you have this problem. Ignored over time, it grows. The financial performance of the company gets worse and worse, and the situation compounds itself. And the resulting employee apathy eventually spreads to management and throughout the entire organization and kills the company from within. It’s not the economy or the market or competitive businesses that ruins it – it is rot from the inside.
None of this happens overnight. It can take years before the full effect of these people becomes evident. And there are plenty of warning signs that the disease is spreading. Here are some of them:
- Work hours are declining. You see an across the board decline in hours worked. Never a good sign.
- Absenteeism is increasing. When you see a trend for more sick time and vacation time being used, it is not a good sign that morale is high.
- You see and hear about more “meetings after the meeting.” Those are the ones in the parking lot or coffee bar where the old-timers (many times those who have been there the longest and are the most negative) are interpreting and editorializing on what management is saying for the rest of the employees. Most of the time in my experience it’s skepticism.
- Staff turnover is increasing. The unhappier people get with smaller raises and bonuses from the firm’s declining financial performance, and the more negativity they are exposed to from their fellow workers, the more likely they are to see if things are better somewhere else.
- Petty disputes are on the rise. The less people have to do and the less focused they are on growing the firm, the more they fight over the scraps and perceived injustices of management.
So what do you do about this?
- Management has to confront the naysayers. Hear them out and then tell them what you are doing immediately. No delay. Delays allow the misconceptions to go on unchecked and make everything worse.
- Management needs to show a willingness to move those out who no longer buy into the program. Yes it’s hard to find people. And yes, no one wants to step up to fill their shoes until a replacement is found. But it’s necessary. You cannot wait until those people decide to leave on their own. All that does is reinforce the idea to the rest of the employees that “they (the naysayers) were right,” and their negativity and cynicism was justified.
- Better people have to be found. And when they are, you don’t want them to be trained by the negative people who are there (often someone who has already turned in their notice) allowing their minds to get polluted. By the way – those who quit for most reasons need to be moved out immediately. There could be an exception for those whose spouses are being relocated, or those who are retiring, but most of the time getting them out now is best.
- Management needs to communicate more. Open-book management. Sharing victories. Sharing stories of heroic behavior from employees. Sharing testimonials from happy clients. Sharing the business plan. Sharing progress toward goals. Positive stuff. More positive information has to be flowing than negative information. The problem usually is management doesn’t think they have time for this – they are busy selling and doing work. But they have to find time to do this.
- Management needs to project confidence and optimism themselves. They cannot look or act defeated. They must demonstrate faith daily that the firm is on the right path.
So does any of this sound familiar to you? Are you allowing a cancer to grow from within your firm? Or are you going to surgically remove it and treat yourself with chemo to be sure it hasn’t spread? The choice to act (or not to) is yours and yours alone.
Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
