Dealing with difficult employees.

• Author: Ajango, Deb

If your firm isn't running smoothly because of workers who are hard to get along with, here's some practical advice from human-resource experts on how to manage, motivate and communicate with these employees-which will improve your staffs morale and, in the long run, boost your business.

Most business owners think sales figures, competitors or investment prospects are their most serious concerns. They are painfully learning that interpersonal relationships within the office can be a greater challenge to overcome.

It has become commonplace for interpersonal difficulties, often between a supervisor and workers, to interfere with productive and healthy work environments. Employees feel overworked and underappreciated. Managers don't know how to interact, when to correct or if they can discipline their workers. Both sides feel disillusioned. Yet, often the status quo is accepted and life goes on, day after difficult day.

This commonplace scenario leaves Alaska's business owners asking, just like thousands of other business owners around the country ask: What does it take to run a good shop?

Lynn Curry-Swann, president and lead trainer for The Growth Company Inc., has facilitated thousands of training sessions for board members, managers and employees for more than 300 Alaska and Pacific Northwest organizations. As a result, she has plenty of experience with employer and employee problems and complaints.

The most common problem that supervisors have with employees, Curry-Swann states, "is that they are not bad enough to fire, but they are not good enough to keep." The employer thinks an employee's work is mediocre and feels ripped off.

Curry-Swann says that managers aren't the only unhappy ones. Employees often think they are doing a good job, but they're unsatisfied because their jobs aren't interesting enough. As a result, they, too, feel ripped off. Employees are more disgruntled with employers these days, Curry-Swann adds. They feel they have only one choice: to complain. They expect others to make them happy or to make their jobs better.

Ultimately, the employer and employee have very different viewpoints and very different expectations. Both are angry. These factors, Curry-Swann believes, are the core problems around which workplace difficulties circle.

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