The following questions help you tell a job-impacting work habit from just a pet peeve. Can you make a clear link between behavior and work performance? If the employee is not willing to modify his behavior, do you really want to take disciplinary action which can result in the individual being fired? The management.about.com website’s advice is not to be too pedantic.
Work habits or serious issues?
Not following instructions, being rude when handling customers and being a micromanager are work habits that have an adverse impact on work performance. More severe performance issues are directly connected to the work itself, because these issues are about the output of the employee’s work. It can be declining sales units with the result of underperforming, it can be an increasing number of complaints filed by customers, it can be too many mistakes.
Low employee engagement scores could be an example of such a performance issue in a managerial role. Serious issues, because they are clearly linked to one’s working duties, are much less likely to be taken personally by the employees because these are more about the work and less about the person. However, in the case of work habits, the manager delivering the evaluation needs to set the connection between the habit and the employee and company performance. For example, constantly interrupting and arguing with customers can eventually lead to loss of revenues.
Little irritating things are usually matter of preference
Those little things done by subordinates that irritate their manager such as tattoos, a messy desk, listening to music with headphones all the time when working or making silly jokes that are not funny. Pet peeves like these may be perceived as a legitimate work habit by one manager, can make another manager mad. There can be a policy requiring clean desks and dress codes, but these things aren’t really connected to work performance. Managers who impose such policies are nags and demonstrate their lack of tolerance. Sometimes it can be viewed as abuse of power and spur turnover.
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