6 Steps To Prevent and Handle Disgruntled Employees
Twelve percent — that’s how much more productive happy employees are on average. Unhappy employees are 10% less productive, according to research by Warwick University. This means even just one disgruntled employee can have a negative impact on business performance.
No matter how incredible your company culture is, the likelihood of someone becoming a disgruntled employee is directly proportional to your organization’s workforce size. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, 90% of employees in the UK are unhappy at work, and just 10% say they are engaged at work.
However, by identifying the warning signs, you can recognize whether employees are disgruntled and take the necessary action to prevent adverse effects. When you understand why employees become disgruntled, you can take steps to prevent this from happening in your organization.
Contents
What is a disgruntled employee?
How to identify a disgruntled employee
Why do employees become disgruntled?
How to handle disgruntled employees
6 steps to prevent employees from becoming disgruntled
Measuring the success of your efforts
FAQ
What is a disgruntled employee?
A disgruntled employee — also known as a disgruntled worker, dissatisfied employee, or disengaged employee — is someone in the organization who is unhappy or discontent with their employer, team, or aspects of their job, which then affects their professional performance. This could be due to an isolated incident at work, a series of events, or a personal issue they’re dealing with.
Common reasons for employees’ disgruntlement are dissatisfaction with their salaries, overwork, and limited career development prospects. Instead of voicing and addressing their concerns with management, disgruntled employees bottle up their feelings or share their negative views with co-workers. This can affect the entire team’s morale and perpetuate more negativity.
How to identify a disgruntled employee
Identifying a disgruntled employee can help you prevent a problem from escalating and potentially resolve conflict. As an HR professional, you can mitigate potential issues by looking out for the following warning signs:
- A noticeable drop in productivity and work quality: The employee starts making frequent mistakes, leaving tasks incomplete or even undone, missing deadlines, or failing to meet KPIs or OKRs.
- Sudden, persistent tardiness or more frequent absence: The employee suddenly and more often is late to work or meetings or calls in sick significantly more often than before.
- Decreased interest in or contribution to meetings and discussions: The employee stops sharing their opinions in a collaborative environment and doesn’t seem interested in getting involved in the conversation anymore.
- Lack of cooperation/increased resistance and defensiveness: The employee becomes unwilling to do what their colleagues or managers ask of them. They also start showing more resistance and defensiveness to suggestions and feedback.
- Negative feedback from other team members: The employee is experiencing conflict with one or more team members or not pulling their weight, resulting in other team members having to take on their work.
- Decreased communication/increased aloofness: The employee’s demeanor changes, and they become sullen or cold, even towards team members with whom they normally get along well.
Why do employees become disgruntled?
There are many possible reasons why employees become disgruntled at work. Common causes include:
Low remuneration
Employees who feel strongly that their employer isn’t compensating them adequately for their work can easily become dissatisfied with their roles. This is one of the most common reasons an employee becomes disgruntled.
HR tip
Review and adjust compensation packages regularly to reflect industry standards and individual performance. Also, be transparent about how remuneration is determined and offer additional benefits where possible.
Low job security
Employees can experience job dissatisfaction if they feel their employer could terminate their employment at any time. Without job security, it’s impossible for employees to commit properly to the job.
This uncertainty may stem from various sources, such as frequent restructuring, ongoing redundancies, or a volatile industry landscape. The fear of unexpected job loss can lead to decreased morale, reduced productivity, and overall disengagement.
HR tip
How frequently does your organization communicate business changes to its workforce? Organizing Town Hall Meetings or quarterly company meetings where leadership and department heads discuss upcoming changes and company updates can help keep employees informed and engaged.
Limited career progression or personal development opportunities
When employees see no clear path for growth within the organization, their motivation and engagement levels can plummet. This sense of being “stuck” can arise from several issues, like a lack of promotions, inadequate professional development programs, or insufficient feedback and mentoring.
Over time, these factors can lead to a high turnover rate as employees seek growth and development opportunities elsewhere.
HR tip
Do you have a career progression framework in place? Define clear career paths, set measurable milestones, and outline the skills and experiences needed for advancement. Additionally, provide individual development opportunities, such as training programs, workshops, and mentorship programs, to help employees acquire new skills and prepare for future roles.
Insufficient support from supervisor/colleagues
Employees can feel overwhelmed and isolated if supervisors or colleagues don’t provide them with enough support to perform their roles successfully. This can lead to burnout and reduced job satisfaction. Lack of support could also stem from a work culture that does not actively encourage collaboration or helping one another.
HR tip
Develop and implement a mentoring program to match supervisors with new hires or struggling employees. This should include regular one-on-ones between supervisors and employees to assess what is and isn’t working and how supervisors can better support employees. Some employees may need further training and development or additional resources to perform better at work—such a program could help supervisors uncover and address any such gaps in employee support.
Lack of work-life balance
Everyone needs a healthy balance between their work and personal lives. Without this, employees will eventually burn out, which will have a knock-on effect on their performance and happiness at work.
HR tip
To help your company’s employees maintain a healthy work-life balance and prevent burnout, implement policies that promote taking short, frequent breaks or slightly longer lunch breaks (e.g., 45 minutes instead of half an hour). You can also give employees access to resources like mental health support, which can go a long way in minimizing stress and preventing burnout.
Lack of professional recognition
Employees can easily become unmotivated and disgruntled if their employer doesn’t acknowledge or reward their achievements. This causes them to feel unappreciated and may lead to decreased productivity and lower quality of work, in turn affecting the rest of their team.
HR tip
As an HR professional, you can help develop an employee recognition program to ensure your company acknowledges and rewards employees’ achievements and contributions. This will boost employee morale, increase productivity, strengthen company culture, and improve the company’s employee retention rate.
Poor management
Employees often leave managers, not companies. A manager’s behavior, communication style, and lack of support can significantly impact employee satisfaction and morale. Employees who feel unvalued or unsupported by their direct superiors are more likely to become disgruntled.
HR tip
Introduce a training program centered around emotional intelligence, effective communication, and leadership skills for managers. By helping managers to relate better to their employees, you can help foster a more supportive, appreciative management culture. You can also provide an employee feedback platform that can help HR identify and address any issues as early as possible.
Personal issues
Personal issues can significantly impact an employee’s performance and overall job satisfaction. Factors such as family problems, health concerns, or financial difficulties can cause stress that spills over into the workplace. When employees struggle with personal challenges, their focus, productivity, and engagement can suffer.
HR tip
Develop a total wellbeing strategy that covers all areas of employee wellbeing — from mental and physical wellbeing to career and financial wellbeing.
How to handle disgruntled employees
Handling disgruntled employees can be tricky, especially as each person and scenario tend to differ. Here are some tips for how HR can handle disgruntled employees and reach favorable resolutions.
- Offer counseling and communication: Take time to talk and listen to each disgruntled employee in order to understand the root of the problem.
- Provide conflict resolution: Be open and fair when discussing potential solutions to the problem with both the employee and their supervisor/manager.
- Document everything: Document all discussions, warnings, and disciplinary actions so there’s a formal record in place. This can help you better handle similar situations in the future and protect you from legal battles.
- Follow up: Make time to regularly check in with the employee and their supervisor (either weekly or fortnightly) to monitor the situation. This will help you determine if there’s been any progress.
- Remain flexible: The resolution plan must be adjusted depending on how the employee responds.
6 steps to prevent employees from becoming disgruntled
Step 1: Foster open communication
Encouraging employees to provide open, honest feedback makes them much less likely to suppress their feelings. This allows you to address their concerns sooner rather than leaving them to fester.
Conducting employee surveys regularly is a great way to communicate with your workforce proactively. This could include an employee satisfaction survey.
Keeping it transparent at AIHR
AIHR’s People Team keeps communication transparent between leadership and employees by hosting “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions, where leaders answer employee questions.
There are also monthly and quarterly wrap-ups, where the senior leadership team presents the latest results on the company’s progress toward its goals and vision. Video updates from the CEO also provide the workforce with the latest announcements, so employees feel included in the organization’s plans and activities.
Step 2: Offer professional development opportunities
One of the best ways to prevent employees from becoming disgruntled is to offer them plenty of career progression opportunities. As technology rapidly evolves and industries change, employees need a growth mindset and new skills to adapt to their organizations.
HR can play a key role in facilitating this mindset and professional development by helping employees understand their current skills, set new goals, and create learning plans. HR can also offer employees valuable feedback and mentorship so they can progress within the organization.
Establish a professional development plan (PDP) for employees at all stages of their journey in your company, which will act as a roadmap for their career progression.
Professional development at AIHR
All new hires are onboarded with a personalized 30-60-90 day plan to help them better integrate into their new roles and learn their role and responsibilities — setting them up for success within their first 90 days.
AIHR has also developed the LEARN career progression framework, with growth talks scheduled every 6 to 12 months. It is an employee-led growth plan, with goal setting and actions to work towards the employees’ aspirations. The employee’s manager supports the process with resources, mentoring, and coaching.
Step 3: Recognize and reward contributions
Many employees become disgruntled because their employers don’t recognize or reward their positive achievements. This is why your organization should build a culture of recognition at work — you can implement a total rewards strategy, which uses an effective, inclusive rewards package that combines compensation, benefits, wellbeing, recognition, and development.
This can motivate the workforce to achieve their potential and grow within the organization. By building a workforce of engaged, satisfied, and motivated employees, you can help improve business performance and achieve organizational goals. An effective total rewards strategy will motivate employees to be more productive, remain with the company longer, and attract new top talent.
HR tip
Conduct a rewards audit to assess your organization’s current total rewards strategy. This allows you to determine whether the strategy ensures that the company’s reward systems are effective, equitable, and aligned with business goals.
Step 4: Ensure a healthy work-life balance
Wellness incentives can increase productivity and morale, and reduce absenteeism at work. Wellness programs that address physical, mental, emotional, financial, social, professional and intellectual wellness can promote a culture of wellbeing in your company. This includes offering employees counseling, mindfulness sessions, healthy snacks, gym memberships, financial management seminars, or company retreats.
Flexible work policies are on the rise and can make a huge difference to employees who are balancing other responsibilities, such as children, caring for a sick family member, long commutes to work, or disabilities. A hybrid work schedule offers the best of remote and in-office working, providing greater flexibility without compromising face-to-face interaction with colleagues in an office environment.
Wellness at AIHR
Preventing stress and burnout is important at AIHR, which is why we offer free employee access to OpenUp. The service offers unlimited psychological support, mindfulness coaches, and many other resources.
Step 5: Set up a process to promptly address issues
HR can set up a formal process for dealing with disgruntled employees, with the ideal outcome being problem resolution and restoration of employee happiness.
Start by reviewing the situation involving a disgruntled employee to determine its severity. Where necessary, facilitate meetings between employees and managers. You and the manager should hear the employee out and calmly respond during the meeting. As the HR representative at the meeting, remain empathetic and objective when hearing both parties’ concerns.
Once the meeting is concluded, offer solutions to resolve the issue. In more severe situations, an employee may want to file a formal complaint — such as concerns with their manager or company policies. HR will need to present when an employee lodges a formal complaint.
Step 6: Offer competitive compensation and benefits
If your organization’s employees consistently express dissatisfaction with their compensation in employee surveys, you must reassess the company’s compensation and benefits package. Matching what your competitors offer is a good start, but that alone may not solve the problem.
Employees are equally interested in benefits such as health insurance, pet insurance, sick pay, paid vacation time, and more. It’s worth conducting an employee survey to understand what they value most, though this will vary from one employee to another.
Measuring the success of your efforts
Here are some HR metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your plan for spotting and preventing or minimizing instances of disgruntled employees:
- Turnover rate: The turnover rate refers to the number of employees who have left the organization (voluntarily and involuntarily) within a specific period, divided by the number of employees the company had at the start of that period. It’s important to note that new hires — anyone hired in the last 90 days — are not included in this equation. This figure gives you an indication of the rate at which people leave your organization.
- Employee retention rates: Employee retention rate is the total number of employees at the end of a set period of time, divided by the number of employees at the start of this period, then multiplied by 100. This can be calculated for any period of time, or following a period of significant change within the company to assess the effect of this change. This metric offers insight into an organization’s ability to retain a stable workforce.
- Productivity: Productivity can be measured in many ways. You can do so by taking your output and dividing it by your input, using online time-tracking and project management software, gathering 360-degree feedback, or through management by objectives (MBO).
- Employee engagement: This metric is typically measured by assessing information gathered from annual engagement surveys, pulse surveys, eNPS, one-on-one interviews, stay interviews, turnover rate, and absenteeism rate.
To sum up
Just one disgruntled employee can have a negative impact on your entire team and compromise business performance. Taking steps to prevent and appropriately handle disgruntled employees is the best approach to minimizing disruption and bringing your disgruntled workers back into the fold.
At the same time, measuring your progress and pivoting your strategy accordingly will ensure an effective process that reduces the chances of employees becoming disgruntled.
FAQ
A disgruntled employee is someone who has become unhappy or discontented at work. The issue could be with their team, their employer, or specific parts of their job.
Disgruntled employee behavior includes bottling up feelings, spreading negative views among co-workers, challenging supervisors, missing deadlines, and not completing tasks. Disgruntled employees often also isolate themselves from their teams, show up late to work, take unusually long breaks, and struggle to collaborate with team members.
The most common reasons for employee dissatisfaction include low remuneration, lack of job security, limited career progression, lack of support from supervisors or colleagues, poor work-life balance, lack of recognition at work, poor management, and personal issues.
HR can communicate openly and honestly with them to determine the root problem. HR must then take steps to resolve the conflict by offering potential solutions. Regularly following up with the employee helps HR monitor the situation and determine if any further is warranted.
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