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What to do if an employee is rude to workers, vendors
The question: I'm having an employee problem at my business. One person, who does great work and has been with our firm several years, has been consistently rude to other workers over the past year. Plus he has a real attitude when sales representatives and vendors call. We've talked about his behavior problem on several occasions; each time he reassures me things will get better. They haven't. I feel I need to give him an ultimatum, but I'm afraid if I do he'll just quit. What should I do?Dr. Spann responds...
"great work'' when he is rude. If this employee quits, the manager needs to feel the employee had every opportunity to improve.Make clear that rudeness is performance issue
Since rudeness can negatively affect customer perception of your products and services, employees' performance standards should include positive working relationships with all internal and external contacts. Using this standard, this employee is not doing
It is possible the employee does not think rudeness affects his "great'' performance. It's also possible the manager's talks were perceived as friendly chats, not performance discussions. The manager should talk again with the employee, stating that rudeness is a performance problem which must stop. Since rudeness can be changed immediately, a short monitoring time frame of two weeks is reasonable.
If no improvement is seen within that time, a final warning with a two-week monitoring period can be given, noting that if no improvement is seen, termination will result. If this employee has some special skill, the manager should immediately assign someone to work with the employee to learn as much as possible.