Tackling Lethargic/Lazy team members to make them accountable

We might have been in a situation where someone in our team very often seems to be busy surfing social media like Facebook, WhatsApp and listening to music or watching youtube videos though they have some priority tasks/work which needs to be addressed/delivered soon. Other team members in the team are frantically working their own tasks and also picking the lazy people tasks as well which in turn reduces the team productivity. In this article, I'm gonna cover how you can tackle a different type of lazy behaviors.

Below are the different lazy characteristics that you might see in a few individuals

Invisible - This person will often go invisible during the critical deliverables or important meetings without informing the team.

E.g. Taking sick off or lengthy breaks when the team is supposed to do any critical delivery or deployment.

To tackle this person, you have to set strict timebound expectations from them and enforce them consistently to get them on track.

Victim - This person will give excuses always to skip the work that comes in his way.

E.g. My car got breakdown so won't be able to come to the office.

To tackle this person, you have to document all the excuses that they are giving so that based on the pattern you can take an action next time.

Dawdler - This person will take more time than required to deliver a task or deliverables by wasting time on nonessential tasks

E.g. Delivering a task of 2hours in 8hours by idling or focusing on unimportant tasks

To tackle this person, you have to be strict in timelines or deadlines which makes them accountable to complete

Delegator - This person will avoid work by pushing his work to others

E.g. If you give a task to a person he'll delegate it to co-team member saying that he is fully occupied

If you want to tackle this person, you have to keep an eye on their workload and monitor that they are not delegating their task to someone in the team. If he violates this call them and sort the issue.

Stirrer(Troublemaker) - This person who not only work on his tasks and disturb others to not work by spreading rumors or gossips within the team.

If you want to tackle this person, you have to closely engage with them and understand the reason/concern behind that and sort that issue. If it is not working you have to let them go from the organization.