3 Simple Tips On How To Deal With Unreliable Employees

Hiring managers specializing in the skilled trades know that reliable tradesmen are critical to their company’s success. 

In the trades, you have to be able to depend on your team. In a previous post, we discuss the value of employee-employer trust. Trust and dependability are two side of the same coin.

But what are the costs of not dealing with unreliable employees? They can create problems for the entire company and create significant negative issues in the workforce.   

According to the Business to Business giants over at LinkedIn:

If you are saying things like “I just can’t rely on [insert employee name]”, you have an unreliable employee.

By tolerating unreliable behaviour, you are effectively asking your other staff to do their own work plus a portion of the unreliable staff member’s work. Over time, the stress and fatigue they experience will affect their productivity. In turn, this could lead to other problems in your business.

No business wants to deal with unnecessary employee problems.

In this post, we discuss three sure-fire methods to deal with unreliable employees:

  • Be Straightforward 
  • Be Timely
  • Be Decisive

Make sure you have documented plans to deal with employee issues that are part of your employee handbook.

Be Straightforward 

If something comes to the management team’s attention from the field, it’s probably already happened several times. So don’t wait for two or three more strikes before issuing a warning. Verify the issue, being late for work for example, and put the employee on notice that there will be consequences if it happens again. Put the warning in writing.

Be Timely

Take timely action exactly as you discussed it with the employee and informed them of it in writing. In other words, enforce the consequences and escalate through a stricter second warning, also in writing.

Be Decisive

When your warnings have reached the level of threat of termination, you need to follow through. You might like the employee personally, and they are probably a good person. But you can’t let a bad employee spread bad habits throughout your workforce.

By following a structured plan of escalating warnings and consequences, you provide a fair, enforceable plan to give your employee a chance to correct their problems or face the consequences. 

You also need a straightforward, timely, decisive recruiting partner for all of your skilled trades hiring needs.

Get the skilled construction workers you need from the expert recruitment team at Skilled Trades Partners. Whether you need temporary, specialized talent for a project or want to add skilled tradespeople to your permanent workforce, we can provide employees who are qualified, vetted, and ready to work.

When you partner with Skilled Trades Partners, you can expect our team to help you:

  • Access the skilled, specialized tradespeople you need—quickly!
  • Control labor costs
  • Increase productivity
  • Complete projects on time

Are you a construction hiring manager or hiring specialist with a skilled trades job search, or searches, underway? 

Call us today at one of our four New England office locations:

Maine: 207-888-2683, New Hampshire: 603-237-1880, Connecticut: 860-200-1374, Massachusetts: 508-689-9728

Or get in touch online. Our expert skilled trades recruiters are waiting for your call.