Tips to Minimize Work Negativity.

Nothing affects employee morale more insidiously than persistent workplace negativity. It saps the energy of your organisation and diverts critical attention from work and performance. Negativity occurs in the attitude, outlook, and talk of one department member, or in a crescendo of voices responding to a workplace decision or event.

What causes workplace negativity?

Is it rumours and misinformation or just bad communication? Is it a lack of leadership, or is it too much work and not enough money? Worry about retirement, a lack of challenge, or other turmoil can all contribute to negativity. However, sometimes negativity can be caused by one or two employees who decide to engage in conflict at work. Sort through the sources of discontent and explore your options.

As a manager or human resources professional, you are closely in touch with employees throughout the company. This allows you to keep your fingers on the pulse of the organisation to sense workplace negativity. It enables you to establish and heed early warning signals that all is not well. You receive employee complaints, do exit interviews with employees who leave, and know the reputation of your organisation in your community.

You watch the discussions on employee Intranets, manage the appraisal and 360-degree feedback process, and coach managers in appropriate staff treatment. This information will help you learn to identify the symptoms of negativity before its morale-busting consequences damage your workplace. It will also assist you in preventing and curing workplace negativity.

Diagnose Workplace Negativity

Negativity is an increasing problem in the workplace, one author of Managing Workplace Negativity states, in a Management Review article, that negativity is often the result of a loss of confidence, control, or community. Knowing what people are negative about is the first step in solving the problem.

In my experience, when rumblings and negativity are beginning in your organisation, talking with employees will help you understand the exact problems and the degree to which the problems are impacting your workplace. You will want to identify the exact employee groups who are experiencing the negativity, and the nature of the issues that sparked their unhappiness.

Perhaps the organisation made a decision that adversely affected staff. Perhaps the executive manager held a staff meeting and was perceived to threaten or ignore people asking legitimate questions. Maybe staff members feel insecure because concern exists over losing a product line.

Perhaps underground rumours are circulating about an impending layoff. People may feel that they give the organisation more than they receive in return. They may feel that a co-worker was mistreated or denied a deserved promotion.

Whatever the cause of the workplace negativity, you must address the issues. Or like a seemingly dormant volcano, they will boil beneath the surface, and periodically bubble up and overflow to cause fresh damage.

The best way to combat workplace negativity is to keep it from occurring in the first place. These seven tips will help you minimize workplace negativity.

• Provide opportunities for people to make decisions about and control and/or influence their own job. The single most frequent cause of workplace negativity I encounter is traceable to a manager or the organisation making a decision about a person’s work without her input. Almost any decision that excludes the input of the person doing the work is perceived as negative.

• Make opportunities available for people to express their opinion about workplace policies and procedures. Recognise the impact of changes in such areas as work hours; pay; benefits; assignment of overtime hours; comp pay; dress codes; office location; job requirements; and working conditions.
  
  These factors are closest to the mind, heart and physical presence of each individual. Changes to these can cause serious negative responses. Provide timely, proactive responses to questions and concerns.

• Treat people as adults with fairness and consistency. Develop and publicise workplace policies and procedures that organise work effectively. Apply them consistently. As an example, each employee has the opportunity to apply for leave time. In granting his request, apply the same factors to his application as you would to any other individual’s.

• Do not create “rules” for all employees, when just a few people are violating the norms. You want to minimise the number of rules directing the behaviour of adult people at work. Treat people as adults; they will usually live up to your expectations, and their own expectations.

• Help people feel like members of the in-crowd; each person wants to have the same information as quickly as everyone else. Provide the context for decisions, and communicate effectively and constantly.
  
  If several avenues or directions are under consideration, communicate all that you know, as soon as you know it. Reserve the right to change your mind later, without consequence, when additional factors affect the direction of ultimate decisions.

• Afford people the opportunity to grow and develop. Training, perceived opportunities for promotions, lateral moves for development, and cross-training are visible signs of an organization’s commitment to staff.

• Provide appropriate leadership and a strategic framework, including mission, vision, values, and goals. People want to feel as if they are part of something bigger than themselves. If they understand the direction, and their part in making the desired outcomes happen, they can effectively contribute more.

• Provide appropriate rewards and recognition so people feel their contribution is valued. The power of appropriate rewards and recognition for a positive workplace is remarkable. Suffice to say, reward and recognition is one of the most powerful tools an organisation can use to buoy staff morale.

Take some time to analyse how well your organisation is applying these seven recommendations. They form the foundation for positive staff morale and minimised negativity in your workplace.

At Humba-HR-Consultants has underlined some very interesting pointers to assist with turning the negatives to positives as fundamentally underlined below:

Negative attitudes are a lot like the common cold, it can start with just one employee, but soon everyone is feeling the effects and morale and performance decline. But unlike the common cold, there's a cure. Enthusiasm and positive attitudes can spread just as quickly-improving performance and increasing productivity!

  

Here are 5 tips for overcoming workplace negativity with enthusiasm:

1. Turn Barriers into Opportunities

Look at negative behaviours and attitudes as opportunities for improvement. Now instead of dreading these issues, you can maintain your own positive attitude by controlling your response. Often negativity starts with negative self-talk—the looped messages that play over and over in our heads to darken our outlook and erode our confidence.

2. Replace Negative Self-Talk with Positive Self-Talk

Negative thoughts lead to self-doubt and failure. Look for negative messages in your own thinking or in the thinking and actions of others. Try turning the negatives into positives. Positive thinking will result in positive actions and results.

3. Build Relationships Based on Trust

Use positive attitudes and enthusiasm to build relationships. Negative attitudes make it difficult to trust others; and without trust you can’t influence positive change. Taking action to build trust will increase comfort levels and strengthen relationships.

4. Win People to Your Way of Thinking

The only way to win an argument is to avoid it. When handled correctly, disagreements and debates are opportunities for positive change. When disagreements arise, show respect for the opinions of others, never tell someone they are wrong, and try to see things from the other point of view.

5. Disagree Agreeably

The key question that we all face is, "How do we disagree agreeably and still have our ideas heard?" Keep the lines of communication open by trying to see things from a different perspective. Take the time to really think about how the other person thinks and why they feel the way they do.