Friday, October 18, 2019

On handling a needy employee


How do you handle a needy employee? A needy employee is someone who often seeks your attention. Among many other reasons, he does this because he lacks confidence in doing his job. Where does his lack of confidence emanates? There are many behavioral reasons to this lack of confidence. If it emanates from his lack of knowledge on how to properly do his job. The solution available is to educate again the person on how to do his job properly.

After reeducating the person again the expectation of the manager is the neediness behavior would be cured or eliminated. But more often than not an employee’s neediness doesn’t only emanate from the lack of proper knowledge about the job. Sometimes it’s much deeper than what we think it is. And when this is so, the manager should sit-down and have a heart-to-heart talk with the needy employee to properly address the symptom of his neediness.   

One of the results of the heart-to-heart talk could be lack of freedom on the job. For the simple reason that the manager is micro-managing his direct report. The solution here is to loosen the grip and give the direct report freedom in doing his job. This freedom that is given is of course not absolute it should still be within the ambit of the rules and regulation of the organization. Lack of self-confidence of the direct report can be solved also by telling the employee that you would always be there to help if needed.

Needy employees exist. And an effective and good manager can easily address this human behavior issue by having a heart-to-heart talk with the concerned employee.  – Marino J. Dasmarinas

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