When There's a Freeloader on Your Team
A major employee demotivator is a colleague who isn't
pulling his weight - and is getting away with it.
FREE RIDERS. HITCHHIKERS. DEADWOOD. SLUGS. Drones. Barnacles. Slackers. Every manager has had one of these on her team at some point - whether she knew it or not. Even if she wasn't aware that one of her employees wasn't pulling his weight, his peers certainly were - after all, they had to pick up his slack and find ways to work around him. Chances are they found the experience enormously frustrating and demoralizing.
According to extensive research that we and others at The Gallup Organization (Washington, D.C.) have conducted over the past decade, few factors are as corrosive to employee engagement as a colleague who skates through the workweek taking advantage of the much harder work of others. What's the cost of disengagement? Much more than any manager wants to pay.
"Engagement" may sound like a soft concept, but it's one with a hard bottom-line impact. For example, work teams with the highest levels of engagement outperformed those with the lowest level, averaging 18% higher productivity and 12% greater profitability. Business units with many actively disengaged employees experience 51% more turnover than do those with many engaged employees. When you consider that replacing an entry-level employee costs anywhere from 25% to 80% of his annual wage and replacing a specialist such as an engineer or salesperson costs 75% to a staggering 400% of her annual pay, disengagement's impact on a business unit's profitability is clear. People who feel part of a solidly committed team are routinely safer, better with customers, less likely to quit, and more productive than those who don't. If you've got dead wood in your group, you're losing out not only because of his subpar productivity but also from the effect it has on your team. One of the worst one-two punches to a team's esprit de corps and productivity is having a slacker in its midst and a manager who lacks the spine to do anything about it. If there's someone on your team now who's not pulling her weight, you need to act quickly and decisively to fix the problem. In this article, we draw on more than 10 years of Gallup research in 114 countries across industries as varied as utilities, retail stores, paper mills, government agencies, hospitals, banks, and newspapers to give you a framework for understanding - and correcting - a freeloader's pernicious effect on your team's motivation and productivity. Coasting and cooperation: They're both contagious Managers know in their gut what social scientists have determined in experiment after experiment: when you present a group of people with a chance to earn more by making contributions to the group's general welfare but you don't establish any way to prevent some from coasting, more and more people will give up until almost no one contributes to the common good. For instance, University of Zurich researchers Ernst Fehrand Simon Gächter conducted a series of experiments in which they organized subjects in groups of four and gave every person in each group some money. Individuals could choose to keep the money or contribute some portion of it to the group's pool of funds, which would be increased by 40% and divided equally among the group members, regardless of whether they contributed some, all, or none of their initial stake.
At the beginning of the game, most players invested some of their money, which was measured in points; the average was a little more than 9 out of 20 points. But as the game continued and players who were contributing realized others were freeloading, they reduced their contributions until, 10 rounds later, the average contribution was only 3 points. In other words, the average participant - convinced he was being taken advantage of - kept nearly all his money to himself. Please click here to continue reading When There's a Freeloader on Your Team .
Reprinted from The Gallup Management Journal |
 Note from Kevin
Greetings!
You can run but you just can't hide! We've all talked many times about the downside to keeping actively disengaged people on your team, and now it's time to do something about them! If you are a leader or manager who is currently looking the other way when there are people flying under the radar and dragging down the rest of the team, this article is for you.
As always, all I ask is that you think about the concepts that are presented in these newsletters and raise your awareness when it comes to how they affect your work environment. Here's what I want you to "think" about this month: "The tendency with most mangers and leaders is to focus on the things they are comfortable dealing with and avoid the things that are uncomfortable. Fact is it's the uncomfortable issues that are affecting our bottom lines the most!"
Think about it! How many of you are guilty of turning your head or making excuses for people you KNOW shouldn't work with you because dealing with them is uncomfortable? How many of you are guilty of giving an actively disengaged person a "last chance" for the tenth time because doing what you know is right is uncomfortable? Here are some leadership-management secrets that are my gift to you with this month's issue:
Being a GREAT leader/manager is about getting comfortable being uncomfortable. It comes with the territory.
Being a GREAT leader/manager requires courage - and that's a big word, don't you think?
People are MESSY! Leadership-management is no place for anyone that doesn't understand that the "target" is always moving.
Actively disengaged people are the subject of this month's newsletter and will challenge you to step back and "think" about just how much this group is costing your bottom line. Pay close attention to the cost of keeping actively disengaged people in your organization, the effect they have on your high performers and, most importantly, what you can do to help them find a new and exciting position with your competitor!
KW |
