Dealing with a Lazy co Worker
Lazy co-workers can be the bane of people’s life. You arrive to work and give 100% to find that a colleague is shirking as usual and getting the same perks and benefits as you are. The way the economy is at the moment, many people are fearful of losing their jobs as it is, without having an extra knife in the back with lazy co-workers. It is very tempting to get angry and shout at that person but in reality it has the opposite effect. Not only are you seen as being aggressive in the workplace, your co-worker gets to shine like the cat that got the cream.
Try to look at the situation as if the company were your own. What would sway your decision on how to deal with a situation? Try to keep everything as factual as possible and try to remove your own personal emotions from the situation. If you can do this you give yourself the added advantage of being impartial which will help your perspective on things.
Firstly you need to try a number of steps to solve the problem. Initially you should always try to resolve the problem yourself without involving management. First off you should try talking to the worker concerned and genuinely explaining that you feel they are not doing their fair share of the work. The majority of people would feel embarrassed to have been told that in the first place so hopefully you will se an improvement. For those of you that don’t feel you can do that you need to move to the next step.
The next step would be speaking to your direct boss and explaining your issues. The best way to approach this with your boss is to actually write down the areas that you feel are a problem. If you can put your issues across as constructive rather than moaning then your boss will be more inclined to listen. By rights any good boss should address the issue and the situation will improve.
In the worst cases, many situations are left and not dealt with properly. This is a case of bad people management. One of the key things you can do is keep a record of what your issues are and when they occur. Try to record what step you took to improve the situation and when so that by the time it gets to management level they can see that you have tried to deal with it in the correct manner. The last resort would be to bypass your own manager and take the issue as high up as you need to so until you are finally listened to. The majority of companies want productive workers that are an asset to them, not lazy workers who get away with doing nothing all day. Hopefully if you try not to let the situation become personal and deal with it correctly lazy co-workers needn’t become a problem in the workplace.
