HRIC nieuws

Managing Difficult Employees

HR managers are often confronted with Line Managers, who complain about their subordinates, employees who are difficult to manage. In some cases managers even want to get rid of the difficult to manage employees. They literally drop the problem at the HR department.

Remarks like,

• 'fire this person immediately’,
• ‘I can’t handle him/her’,
• ‘maybe he/she can work at another department’,
• ‘I am sick and tired of this employee’,
• ‘he/she is too difficult to manage’,
• ‘he/she absorbs a lot of my time and attention’,
• 'I really can’t spend that much time on just oneparticular employee’.

These remarks are often ventilated at the HR department.

In this article I would like to elaborate on the so-called difficult to manage employees. For this purpose I used an article written by Paul B.Thornton, from STCC  (Springfield Technical Community College, Massachusetts USA).

Let’s first describe in detail the characteristics of difficult to manage employees, followed by ‘how to deal with difficult to manage employees’.

There are three types of difficult to manage employees:

1. The aggressor
2.  The victim
3. The rescuer

It will always be difficult to work with these ‘types’, but the challenge is how to deal with them and also how can they be more productive in order for managers to focus on other issues than handling complicated employees.

1. The Aggressor, it is the demanding personality. They hardly listen and think they are always right, it is a win or lose situation and for them they always want to win. They often talk down to people, they are the know it all, in Dutch (IWAP ik weet alles beter).
2.  The Victim, the BMW personality. In this sense it has nothing to do with the “Bayerische Motoren Werke” the German car factory. The abbreviation stands for Blame, Moan and Whine. These people blame others for their problems and shortcomings, they come across as helpless and timid and next to that they moan and whine all the time.
3.  The Rescuer, he is the one who is always willing to help and assist the other person. Their major need is to be liked and appreciated. They always say ‘yes’ in order to help others and in this way they mostly forget to do their own job. They want to please you and even sometimes say ‘yes’ because they don’t want to disappoint the superior in rank.

Advice on dealing with difficult to manage employees.

Although the aggressor, the victim and the rescuer ask a lot of attention from their superiors and are difficult to manage, you can manage them. Below an enumeration of things you could do when dealing with difficult tomanage staff members.

•  Discuss their behavior and the impact their behavior has on you and others
• Listen to them and let them know you will explore their point of view
• Treat them equally, don’t treat them differently from other staff members
•  Make them feel valued and appreciated
•  Indicate what you would like to see them do more and less of
• Ask them to cooperate with you and commit to making one or two changes in their behavior.

If none of the above work, offer to help them find another job