Not only children, but also staff need to be educated and trained.
Persuasion (and even coercion in the case of disobedience) is only explicitly mentioned in military regulations. In commercial organisations, the use of coercion is prohibited as it violates civil rights and duties.
But what should a manager do when subordinates refuse to carry out their duties and responsibilities?
Below you will find details of all the legitimate ways to influence them.
Preventive measures
To ensure that subordinates always follow instructions, the manager needs to build a team of like-minded people. This will ensure that all his orders are heard, understood and then carried out. The whole team should be on the same wavelength to understand each other half the time.
However, putting together such a team is almost a pipe dream, especially when there are no special qualification requirements and salaries are average for the market. We have written about the difficulties of working in a team in a separate article. You should also consider how to choose the right people.
Even if there is an effective filter at the recruitment stage (which is primarily the job of HR specialists), it is far from possible to assemble the main core of the team from the outset.
Adequate preparatory work to help you build a dream team may therefore include:
- Several stages of selection, personal interviews and psychological tests. In addition, the future line manager must be personally involved in the process — talking to the candidate at least once to ensure that they are suitable.
- Confirmation of qualifications. This is a purely practical part. It is not enough to just have a document about the profile training, it is desirable to see a person in work. That is why there is a probationary period.
- Regular training and testing. You need to be sure that your employees meet the current requirements for their positions. In addition, subordinates will be able to demonstrate that they understand how and what they need to do to keep the work going in all circumstances.
Of course, there are other activities, such as team-building events, company events, internal competitions and incentives (bonuses for the best/excellent), extra payments for overwork, bonuses for exceeding the plan, and so on. But all this has little to do with refusing to do an assignment or task.
Conversation
Based on the above, if an employee refuses to work on a new task, the manager should first make sure that everything is up to standard:
- Do they understand what needs to be done and how to do it, does the employee understand your assignment correctly (perhaps they have misunderstood something or have no idea how to implement it, for example, they lack knowledge or authority).
- Are there any significant or insurmountable obstacles to completing the task (deadlines, personal motives, family or health problems, low motivation, accumulated fatigue, etc.)?
- Does the task fit within the employee’s job responsibilities (you are not forcing they to do something that is not within the scope of their powers and duties).
Once you are satisfied with all this, you can proceed with the steps below.
Written order and refusal
It is one thing to come and argue verbally, it is another to write an official appeal that is registered in the incoming documentation and that requires an official response. The latter can already be considered as an evidence base for any kind of dispute.
Many tasks that subordinates work with do not have a paper version or a version on any other physical medium. They are usually just words. Most formal instructions are given in writing. Small tasks take longer to record and formalise than to carry out.
But you can always go the other way:
- Invite witnesses: e.g. managers from other departments, other employees, HR representatives.
- Give a verbal order first.
- If the employee refuses to comply, give a written order specifying the task(s), deadlines and format for delivering the result.
- Ask the employee to sign to accept the task.
- If the employee refuses, make a report of the refusal.
- Demand the result by the due date. If there is no result, ask for a written explanation of the reasons.
- If the employee refuses to give an explanation, make a report.
Even if the employee changes his or her mind and does everything correctly, you will have a well-worked out procedure for all future similar situations.
Requiring a written refusal is just an attempt to put pressure on the employee’s conscientiousness. In reality, you do not need to give written instructions to settle disputes in court if the employee’s duties are set out in his employment contract. His signature on such a contract confirms that he is already familiar with them. An explanation or a document confirming the fact of refusal is sufficient.
Written statements and deeds are excellent evidence in civil disputes before the courts and in proceedings before regulatory authorities.
Sanctions and penalties
Instead of paper, you can use electronic systems to set and monitor tasks, such as project management software.
The most logical step to take when a task is not completed is termination, especially if you have evidence such as electronic records and logs of the employee’s actions.
Nothing incentivises work more than losing money for not delivering a result or for poor quality work in general.
But there are many nuances. It is not possible to withhold an employee’s salary. Only the part of the bonus paid for successful work can be deducted from the salary. And this must be preceded by proper legal preparation of the issue — drafting the relevant employment contract and additional agreements to it: the rules of accrual and withdrawal of the bonus part, penalties for certain acts and omissions, etc.
If you simply do not give the employees what they are entitled to, the company itself and individual officers may face sanctions. And fines for legal entities are always significant.
Scheme for deprivation of bonus:
- Acceptance of an explanatory statement about work not done or done badly (alternatively, an act confirming the event).
- Imposition of disciplinary sanctions — reprimand, censure.
- Loss of bonus due to outstanding sanctions.
Additional incentives
This method will not always work, but it will be particularly relevant if the task is complex or non-standard.
If you find out in a face-to-face meeting that the task is outside the employee’s main area of responsibility and they will not want to do extra work for free, a separate bonus for the result or other significant rewards can be a great incentive.
Money is not the only form of additional motivation. It can be: career advancement, recognition (e.g. winning a competition, training, official commendation), benefits (holidays and sanatoriums, additional leave/time off, etc.), valuable gifts (useful items, services, subscriptions for personal and professional needs).
Payments and gifts should also be legally correct, so that auditors do not have any questions about the legitimacy of such actions.
Senior management involvement
Sometimes it happens that the authority or functional responsibility of the immediate manager is not sufficient. But this is no reason to gloss over the situation with a failure to perform. In the end, it can lead to deplorable results on a large scale.
If the manager understands his problems and is ready to learn from his mistakes, to gain professional experience and knowledge, he will invite a superior, who will solve the problem at another level.
It’s not a sure thing. But if the problem becomes public, they will solve it together. There may be different situations: personal conflicts, dislike, lack of authority, wrong approach to management, low level of qualification, lack of experience, and so on. All these can be solved in one way or another if the problem is known.
Dismissal if nothing works
Why keep an employee who is not performing? Yes, this is the most extreme measure, but it is the most effective. Sometimes breaking the relationship with an employee can be very painful for the organisation as a whole — unfinished cases, increased workload for others, difficulty in transferring data/contacts, stopping certain business processes and more. But it is worth the risk.
The logical advice is to build your work first so that this process is painless. For example, profile software solves these problems perfectly — ERP, CRM systems, BPM, task managers and so on.
Only those employees who solve tasks with everyone in the same harness and do not pull the team in the opposite direction should work in the team.
How to fire an employee is discussed in a separate article — here.
In lieu of conclusions
If an employee unexpectedly refuses to do a task, don’t panic or get emotional. Keep as calm and objective as possible. Find out the reasons, outline the consequences and try to find an amicable solution to the problem.
If the problem is urgent, record the fact of the refusal, assign a new employee who can cope with the task, and then deal with the disloyal employees — talk to them, clarify the reasons, impose disciplinary penalties, depress them, etc.
