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Life doesn’t treat
everyone equally. Sometimes life is an ordeal. Employees
have personal problems — a divorce, a serious illness,
a home fire. What impact will such a thing have on your
company?
Employees carry their
problems into work every day. Some managers are alert to
the signs that an employee is bothered and inclined to
take direct action: “You can tell if a person is
hurting by their body language,” says the owner of a
construction equipment rental company in Pennsylvania.
“I’ll invite an employee in if it looks like
something is bothering him or her.”
Others prefer to keep
personal issues out of the workplace: “I try to set an
example by not bringing any of my personal life to the
office. I don’t talk about personal stuff,” says a
general tool-rental manager in Georgia.
Increasingly, employers
are offering their emotionally distraught employees
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). EAPs are designed
to assist both new and established employees in
balancing work and family life.
If yours is a large
company, you probably have a human reources, or
personnel, department that is familiar with this
approach and you may wish to develop an EAP to help
smooth an employee’s return to work as soon as
possible.
If your business is too
small to have an HR department or even a personnel
manager, you may wish to handle the EAP function
yourself — but be aware that this could jeopardize
your management structure: if it is a manager who’s
the supposed problem, you could make things worse for
the company in general by encouraging the distraught
employee to bypass the chain of command and come
straight to you.
You can’t help an
employee if you don’t know what’s bothering him or
her, or if a problem even exists. That tool-rental
business owner in Georgia has a sign on his door that
reads, “Got a problem? Tell me about it.” However
you decide to handle it, let your employees know that
your company cares and is ready to help.
A supervisor should
support and empathize and help the employee get through
the crisis — but also recognize that he or she is not
a professional counselor, and know when to recommend
that the distraught employee seek professional help.
But in this early going,
make sure you listen carefully to what the employee
tells you. That may not be easy; the employee may be too
upset to think or express him/herself clearly. Reassure
the employee; be patient; and make the person feel at
ease, as much as possible.
Try to accommodate the
needs of employees if they ask to take time off or
change their hours to deal with the problem.
And make sure your
employees know that you have an EAP: develop a brochure
or statement telling how it works and explain it at
company meetings, in newsletters and on your bulletin
boards. Be sure to underscore the fact that everything
the employee tells you will be held in confidence.
If your organization
reaches a point where its needs are really suffering
because of an employee’s crisis, sit down with the
employee and explain that to him or her. If the problem
is new, rare or relatively minor in the larger scheme of
things, you might say, “These are things that need to
get done and require your attention. What can you do to
help us out?”
Unfortunately, there are
instances in which the problem is so pervasive that the
employee isn’t able to return to an acceptable level
of attendance or performance and eventually you may have
to terminate him or her.
Most employees who have
been given special consideration usually respond well
when asked by their employer to pitch in and help.
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