When there are talkative employee in the workplace it might be good in some ways, but as they turn into overly talkative ones, they disturb the entire workplace plus the other employees lose their focus and face decrease in their productivity.
When you effectively want to manage the workforce, it is essential to spot such problematic employees and deal with their issue by addressing it to them.
Some employees might not even know that they are really disrupting others work and so you will need to explain them that their behavior is a problem.
If the problem is affecting your company productivity, here are the ways you can put an end to excessive talking or no talking at workplace.
Excessive Talking in the Workplace:
1. Gather all and clarify policy doubts:
If there is more than one employee who is not controlling their talkative behavior, then gather all and define to them the company policy and what you are expecting.
If you assume that your employees surely know the company policies and your expectations of them, then you are certainly wrong.
May be after you explain to them the policies, they will behave accordingly.
2. Ask employees to share work pressure:
Request all employees to keep reminding each other how much workload they are carrying and how little time they got for any chit chat.
When the talkative employee is confronted with such an answer they feel guilty to be messing with other coworker’s work and so will concentrate on their own work too.
3. Avoid any encouraging signs:
When you pass by a talkative employee, do not show any signs of interest in what he is talking.
Show your disappointment or clearly ask them to get back to work. Always keep a face that says that you take no non-sense in front of this employee.
4. Keep a record:
Write down or record to build up evidence to show the employees who talk excessively, examples of their behavior.
It is good to keep evidence in case they deny or do not improve; you can put forth the evidence so they know they have got no way out but to behave as per workplace policies.
5. Setting:
Do not confront with the employee who is an extreme talker in front of other employees.
Call them up to a private setting where only you and the employee can discuss the issue at hand and acquire enough time to do it thoroughly.
6. Separate encounters:
When you have to deal with more than one extreme talkers, it is better to handle each one separately as each are different cases and must be confronted individually.
7. Commence with something positive:
You must embark on a positive note by praising the employee on something he has achieved lately, or appreciating his hard work by staying late at office.
You must establish that you intent on a very positive conversation for a positive outcome from the employee.
8. Ask them to ‘listen’ to you:
When you are having an encounter with the talkative employee to discuss about this behavior, request them that they be quiet and listen to what you have to say.
The talkative employee may likely tend to interrupt your proceeding accustomed to their behavior of talking excessively, thus it is important for you to set the rule of non interruption before the employee to avoid this occurrence.
9. Friendly explanation:
Describe details to the employee that they very often talk out loud. Communicate your concern very politely and in a friendly way.
Do not turn the issue at hand to something that is demoralizing. It is better to handle this problem discreetly rather than hurting the employee’s feelings.
10. Make it about the employee:
Do not keep saying how you do not like the employee’s behavior.
Hint in the first sentence that the meet is about the employee’s talkative behavior and ask questions that will get into the depth of his behavior and will conclude the conversation with a mutual solution.
11. Be objective:
You should not discuss the employee’s talkativeness as a personal attribute. The employee will disregard and not listen to what you are conveying.
Simply focus on the behavioral part and explain the reasons why you are concerned, such as distraction caused by it in the workplace.
12. Do not judge:
You must stay non-judgmental throughout the conversation and stimulate the employee to open up and share what can possibly be the cause of the problem.
The excessive talkativeness may even be the signs for something very significant and troubling such as some abuse issue.
13. Display the record:
Show them the track that you have created to make the employee realize their behavior. Many times the person doesn’t realize the manner in which they behave are troubling others.
Thus you need to demonstrate examples and more precisely can even track down the time period they talk constantly to show the seriousness of the problem.
14. Convince it is a problem:
In a professional setting the employees are expected to only talk about work and related matter and long discussions for a particular work to be finished off can be tolerated.
But when an employee goes on from projects to personal issues to personal life, they surely have to understand that it is work hour and must utilize it for work and not talk.
Articulate this to the employee, so they know it is a problem.
15. Narrate the consequences:
In order to create some seriousness about the issue in the employee’s mind, you will have to narrate the results of such behavior in the workplace.
The coworkers get distracted, lose their productivity and wastage of significant time etc are the effects of such behavior and must be conveyed to the employee.
16. Take help of the company’s policy:
Make them go through the company policy and help them out to behave in a manner that agrees and follows the policies.
However make it clear that you do not imply that the employee be absolutely quiet at work but that he must talk adequately and keep it brief.
17. Let them present their perspective:
Perhaps the employee never understood that his talkative behavior was troubling others or was the reason they were slow at their own work.
Perhaps the employee never even understood that they go on talking about anything, may be you will discover it is a nervous behavior.
18. Settle on strategy:
Ask the employee whether how they will control their behavior in the office. For instance, ask the employee to wait for the lunch hour to discuss with their peers about personal life.
Ask the employee to turn this into their personal goals to help them professionally.
19. Develop performance improvement plan:
Along with the employee, develop a performance improvement plan to meet with these goals.
Spot some opportunity for the employee in the workplace where they can actually utilize their chattiness.
Mutually set a time with the employee to review the plan and discuss if they faced any obstacle in reaching their goals. Perhaps they need to be shifted into some other area of the office.
20. Follow up meet:
You should hold a follow up meet with the employee. In this follow up meet appreciate if the employee has shown considerable changes and is improving.
If they have not improved at all and show no signs of guilt, you need to handle them more strictly.
21. Disciplinary action:
You must not tolerate if the employee purposely or without any intention keeps behaving the way he does and talk unnecessarily in the workplace.
If the employee repeats the same kind of behavior then confront with him again and state that he needs to stop the behavior instantly or will face disciplinary actions.
22. Set deadlines to stop the behavior:
You should know how to stop excessive talking.It is suggested that you set a deadline for the employee to stop the excessive talking in the office.
This way they know they are given their ultimatum and must behave in accordance to the organization’s preference.
State them that if they do not stop with the extreme talking due before their deadline, they will confront actions from the organization that may lead to acknowledged warnings or even termination.
Conclusion:
You must firstly determine whether the talkative employee is really a trouble to you and to other members of the company. If there is no such evidence and no one has really complained, then there is nothing to be fixed. If you any way be stringent on talking employees you might lose their trust and ultimately their confidence and productivity. Do not turn your office all about work, only act when you feel people are talking everything but work.
