Your Work Friends
Unfiltered Takes. Real Solutions. Your Work Sh*t Handled.
Its not just you - work is bonkers. You get hit from all sides. Your boss. Your team. Your clients. Another org change. A layoff. Which makes you want to chuck it all and live off the grid.
Friend-to-friend? We get it. We're in it. And we're finding the best ways to handle your work sh*t so you don't have to go sell candles in Montana.
We're two leadership pros, and friends, hitting you with the latest news, expert interviews, and real solutions.
Your Work Friends
🔥 #6: Sloth - From Our Fishbowl LIVE "7 Deadly Work Sins" Summer Series
Help a friend? Tell us how we're doing (we're seriously curious) by filing out this short (seriously, short) survey: https://forms.gle/VG19hQRLy8bCyFMS6
ABOUT THE EPISODE:
From our Fishbowl LIVE series, the "7 Deadly Work Sins", we bring you the #6th sin, SLOTH …
You know sloth, that feeling of apathy, laziness, like you just don't want to be here.
- Maybe you slacked off on contributing to a project and let your co-workers carry the load.
- Maybe you keep blowing past your deadlines, and wait until something is due to share you need more time.
- Or, maybe you find yourself picking up the work of your teammate who routinely drops the ball.
At work, sloth shows itself in a lot of different ways, and we want to talk about it. How you can recognize it, how you can manage it, and what to do if you're a victim of someone's lack of motivation and ownership.
ABOUT "THE 7 DEADLY" SERIES:
You want to know what really messes employees up? Raw human emotions. Listen, we ALL experience them from time to time (we totally have), but if you don't handle them well, man can they be deal breakers. In this series, we break down
• The common spectrum of experiences with each 'sin',
• We talk about real-life (kinda salacious stories) scenarios (yeah, this stuff happens every day),
• How to not ‘commit’ the sin, and
• Most importantly, how to deal with a sinner
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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Hey friends, it's Francesca. Can I ask you a favor? Can you fill out a quick survey for us to tell us how we're doing on the pod? Mel and I are finishing our first season. We've loved, loved doing the pod, but we're kind of wondering how we do it. What do you like, what don't you like? What are your ideas for a show? We want to hear it. We put a link to the survey in the show notes. So if you could help us out, fill it out and maybe we'll send you some merch. Okay, thanks Bye, mel. The other day you and I were talking about can you buy a yurt on Amazon, can you? Did you look it up? Yes, oh, how much is it Not cheap?
Speaker 2:It's not cheap, nevermind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One of the things Mel and I were talking about while we were waiting to get started is would you ever stay in a yurt? I'm not a big camper, but I would stay in a yurt.
Speaker 2:I would stay in a yurt.
Speaker 1:Feels more like it's on the level of glamping, like maybe below glamping, but like a good middle ground. Yeah, they had yurts at coachella. That's a thing like, oh, I would have, but yes, the yurt is glamping for sure all right, yeah okay, I know that we take up the full time on these sessions.
Speaker 2:So, friends, thank you for joining us. Listen, we are officially less than 40 days left to summer here in the US, so what better way to make the most of a light summer atmosphere than a midweek break from work to talk about all the shit we never get to talk about?
Speaker 1:And I'm Mel hey and I'm Francesca.
Speaker 2:And we have been working in HR for a long ass time. Francesca, how long have you been in HR? 20 years.
Speaker 1:Two zero, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm right, there with you, we're in it to win it. And listen, friends. What we know is, if you want the good stories, you got to ask your friends in HR, because we've seen it and we've heard it all, all of it. And Francesca and I started a podcast to talk about all of this, called your work friends. And look, it's not just you.
Speaker 2:Work is absolutely bonkers. You get hit from all sides your boss, your team, your clients. Potentially maybe you're going through another org change, a layoff, needing to stay on top of emerging trends, and sometimes maybe you just want to chuck it all and live off the grid. But, friend to friend, we get it, we're in it, we're talking about it and we want to help you prepare for tomorrow by making you ready for today. So, fran and I are just two unfiltered leaders here and friends hitting you with all of the news future insights, expert interviews, raw discussion, solutions, and today we're wanting to talk about the seven deadly work sin of sloth. And look throughout our career experience. One thing has remained true from what we've observed there are things that really trip people up at work and sometimes it totally destroys our careers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've seen it, and those things are honestly those raw human emotions that a lot of people don't talk about, or what we lovingly refer to as the sins, things like lust, envy, gluttony, pride, including sloth right. And the thing that is interesting about all of these seven deadly work sins is that we've all experienced them. I certainly have, mel. I know you have right, we all experience them from time to time, but if you don't handle them well, man, they are massive deal breakers?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Look, in this series, the seven deadly work sins, we've covered lust, wrath, envy, greed and gluttony, and today we're jumping into sloth. So look, let's jump right in. Sound good, francesca, yes, it does. All right, sloth happens every single day at work. Why, if you're on this planet right now, the world is a bit overwhelming, which can lead to feelings of apathy and malaise, and some of this leads to not ideal ways of coping, like increased screen time, lack of sleep, copious distraction, and then there's the matter of work environments that are increasingly, let's be honest, getting worse. For example, we have a happiness gap and a trust gap at work, and what does that lead to, francesca? What does that lead to?
Speaker 1:Disaster, yeah, disaster. Or just completely upping their amount of Kirkland Pinot Grigio that they're doing.
Speaker 2:That's going to make you take a nap, all right, and look. This is leading to what we know. Like we know, disengagement's happening. Unproductive work behaviors are happening Even in the most positive work environments.
Speaker 2:Sloth occurs on the low end of a spectrum and that's because, at the end of the day, we are humans. There's some really interesting stats to consider when you think about sloth. According to a recent report by Gallup, unhappy workers cost the US about $450 to $550 billion annually due to lost productivity. Disengaged workers have higher absenteeism around 37 percent, more accidents 49 percent and more errors at 60 percent. 49% and more errors at 60%.
Speaker 2:A survey found that 67% of millennials admit to feeling lazy at work. Who doesn't these days? 2% of employees have called in sick due to feeling lazy and unmotivated to work. Engaging in activities like binge-watching TV shows has been associated with increased feelings of laziness and, on average, americans spend eight hours per day sitting, making it a significant contributor. Research shows that individuals who lack a sense of purpose are also more likely to succumb to feelings of laziness or sloth in the workplace, and the productivity of a team can significantly decrease by up to 30% due to some of the laziness of team members, and just over half. Around 53% of workers only give the minimum effort and will leave a company for a better offer. Listen, everyone's feeling a little lazy and it's a big pet peeve. Recently, mavenlink did a future of work survey and it showed that 47% of employees feel that lazy coworkers are their number one pet peeve. Can you believe that? What do you think? And we have our own stories here, francesca. You have your own story with sloth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen, what's so interesting about all of these quote unquote sins is that there are sinners, ie people that do these things, and then there are also the victims of this sin as well. I have absolutely been the sinner in this story a couple times, but my story today is about when I was quote unquote the victim of a sin. I worked with this guy one time that would start these major projects cool, sexy projects and then just dump the execution on all of his peers, right. And he did this multiple times and come to find out that he always saw himself as a thought leader and he just thought that the execution of the work was below him. So he would see the work, yeah, so he would start it and then just be like, yeah, I don't need to do that, you guys can do that Even though it was absolutely part of his job. So, yes, when you say 47% of employees feel that quote unquote lazy coworkers are their number one pet peeve, it drove me bonkers. It drove me bonkers, yeah.
Speaker 2:I believe it. Did he take credit for it too? I bet oh a thousand percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm just like I'm the big idea guy. Yeah, yeah, I am going to totally admit to being the center here. I've been so guilty of procrastinating on things at work and I think early in my career it served me well, because the adrenaline of that stress and needing to get a result fast I always felt like I'm doing my best work and my ideas, my best ideas, are done this way. But nope, I'm really glad I grew out of that, because all it did was cause stress for myself. But nope, I'm really glad I grew out of that because all it did was cause stress for myself. My team and I really learned the hard way on a specific project where I didn't engage with people until the week it was due and identified. I needed like a million more hours of time to complete what I was working on. That was like the most sucky lesson to learn, but, man, I'm glad I did.
Speaker 1:All right, that's like the worst anxiety dream on the face of the planet. Like where? You're like oh, frick, I was supposed to be studying for the test. You're like I have a 20 page paper due today at 11.
Speaker 2:Listen, folks, oh sloth, yikes, sloth. It's the feeling of apathy, laziness, like you just don't want to be here. Maybe you slacked off on contributing to a project and you let your co-workers carry the load. Maybe you keep blowing past your deadlines, like I did, and you wait until something is due to share that you might need more time. Or maybe you just find yourself picking up the work of your teammate who routinely drops the ball At work. Sloth shows itself in a lot of different ways and we want to talk about it. So let's buckle up the agenda. Today. We're going to cover how you can recognize sloth, how you can manage it and what to do if you're a victim of someone else's overall apathy. You're on the sidelines, right? We really want this to be interactive, folks. Francesca and I love to talk about this stuff, but, more importantly, we love to hear from you and hear about your experiences, and not just to have events session, but to talk about how you can overcome it. Let's help each other in the process. So we're making this interactive so we can all get in on the conversation today. Please come up on stage, raise your hand. We're happy to bring you up If you need it to be like Vegas and anonymous, we're happy to do that too. Just send us a DM and we will read your DMs and we do try to get through everything, but if we can't, we will follow up after the call and at the end we're going to leave time for some quick Q and a on some sticky situations that might come in. So send your sticky situation into us and again, we will keep those anonymous, or you can come up on stage. Sound good, francesca? Should we get into it? Yes, we should. All right, if you just joined us.
Speaker 2:We're talking about the seven deadly work sins and today it is sloth. Let's talk sloth. Here's the deal. 99.9% of us have experienced sloth at work. This has been a super hot topic in the news for a few years now, francesca. We covered this when we talked about quiet quitting, which we both think is a little bit of bullshit because they're putting some directive on employees versus ownership on the org side. We also talked about issues in the workplace due to current climate. Right Gartner noting 63% of employers don't trust employees and 53% of employees don't trust employers, and the workplace environment is absolutely impacting sloth at work. So what is it?
Speaker 2:The basic definition reluctance to work, laziness, complacency and sloth, like our other deadly work sins is really complex and it can manifest in a lot of different ways and a lot of different levels, and we're going to cover this today. On a spectrum right, this is low, medium, high and illegal. Let's jump into the low end of things, the safety zone, minor slacking. At the lowest end of the spectrum, we have minor slacking. This is small scale stuff, folks. Things like small scale procrastination, low effort on non-critical tasks and it's pretty common for everyone to have done this or witnessed someone else doing this in the workplace. It looks like frequently delaying non-urgent tasks, stretching out your breaks maybe your lunch is like an extra 30 minutes or extra long walk back, doing the bare minimum in daily duties, routinely asking others to handle your simple tasks, or just finding yourself really checking out, especially during meetings. Right, you're mentally checked out, you're disengaged. This stuff happens and we get it. Francesca, have you ever expressed one?
Speaker 1:of these? Yeah, Every time I have to do an expense report, I hate them. Yeah, absolutely. I will argue that at least a couple of times a week I do some of these. I know we're all doing the best we can. Yes, absolutely Look folks.
Speaker 2:I think most of us live in the minor slacking zone. Let's just own it. There is something you are kicking a can down a road somewhere. That's part of minor slacking, and look, the risk factor here could get dangerous, but it's usually pretty safe. Allowing small selfish behaviors can make them seem normal and lead to bigger workplace problems, though, so something to be aware of. There's no real legal risks here, right. You're only guilty of your potential selfishness, of not doing some stuff. Workplace relationship risks though. Here that's. It just depends, right. If you're letting down your teammates or if you're finding yourself walking in with a fresh coffee every morning when you're 15 minutes late and you didn't bring other people something, maybe people are going to start noticing and that might start impacting your work relationships. But again, I think the majority of us live in the minor slacking space. That's just human nature, can I say?
Speaker 1:something. Oh, absolutely yeah, even if you're a hundred. I have known people I might live with one that is like a hundred percent on top of everything at work, right, yeah, but you know they're kicking the can on Making the dentist appointment, making the doctor's appointment, right, we all live in the minor slack.
Speaker 2:We all live there. Look, we're all sinners in that space and we're all likely victims of the sin in that space too, to some degree. But if you don't check it at the minor slacking stage, start to go up that spectrum right. So the medium zone is what we start to call chronic laziness, and the key word here is the chronic component. At this stage, if you're the center, this means you're consistently avoiding responsibility and you're likely making minimal contribution to team goals. You're having more noticeable self-serving actions that can have a moderate impact on your colleagues or the organization. That might lead to reduced trust and morale. You're definitely someone's pet peeve right now. If you're at this stage, don't think that's not going unnoticed. It absolutely is. And at this stage you really can start to damage your brand reputation. If you're the center and it just sucks, right, it sucks for your coworkers and it sucks for your boss too.
Speaker 2:As a people leader, the worst conversations I ever had was having to bring up something around, a chronic thing that I knew was fixable but couldn't get through to someone. And it's. No one wants to have that conversation. It just sucks. This can look like regularly missing your deadlines, delegating important tasks unnecessarily to other people avoiding any challenging assignments. So you're like, yep, not doing that, I get it.
Speaker 2:If you're not getting paid, we're total proponents of get paid for your work, so I don't want to confuse that with that. But if you're just like I'm going to avoid kind of equilibrium and supporting the team in an equal way. That's what we're talking about here. Arriving really late to work or leaving early, really often producing work that requires frequent connect corrections because you didn't slow down to check that work. That then becomes a time waster for others. The two key words here, if you're the center, is it's chronic behavior and you're regularly now impacting other people in a way that's really detrimental to the day to day. Francesca, chronic laziness. When you see it right, what does that look like for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's interesting about it is as an as someone who works for someone like this, as someone who has been a peer of someone like this, and as someone who has managed people like this as well. You know it and you feel it big time, because it really has this kind of meta impact on the entire team. One person can have a pretty massive ripple effect because they're not basically in that equilibrium, as you said. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And look. Work and life are hard. You want to feel like there's equal support. Everyone's in it together. I'd love to hear from the audience If you found yourself in stage one or stage two on this spectrum feel free to come up on board and share or if you've witnessed it you've been on the sidelines, you've been a victim of the sin, tell us how it's impacted you and your team.
Speaker 2:The risk factor here, guys, goes way up, because we see it, we feel it, we as in plural, your colleagues, your team, your peers, your stakeholders. Chronic laziness, if not checked for the company, can lead to low morale, high turnover, a damaged reputation and a toxic work culture For individuals. These behaviors can strain relationships, harm your reputation, result in negative reviews. It could hinder your career growth altogether. At this stage, you might be receiving things like written warnings. You might get put on a performance improvement plan the dreaded PIP no one wants to ever be on. You might get reduced opportunities for advancement and you might be required to take additional training or coaching because of it Just something to pay attention to and monitor. If you find yourself here, we're going to move on up now to high. So we have said this across the series guys, you never want to move past medium. That is. I think that's just a given. You never want to move past stage two because typically once you get into stage three and the high end, it quickly can move into the legal end. So just want to check yourself here. Stage three and the high end it quickly can move into the illegal end. So just want to check yourself here.
Speaker 2:Stage three, at the high end, is severe neglect. As sloth intensifies, it can turn into severe neglect, which is really just the overall blatant disregard for duties. Let me tell you what this looks like in real life Frequent absenteeism, ignoring urgent tasks completely passing off critical tasks to others without planning ahead, routinely failing to meet key objectives, refusing to improve despite feedback or conversations. This is if you're the center. This is how this shows up and again, the risk factor here is going way, way up, because this side of the spectrum whether you're the sinner or you're on the receiving end or just a bad bystander it's overall bad news.
Speaker 2:This is the stage, when you're a sinner, where you may become a huge liability for your company because of this demonstrated behavior. At this stage you may receive disciplinary action. It puts you at risk of termination. You definitely are losing trust from your team, potentially your boss or your clients. You may have negatively impacted team morale and you may possibly be reassigned or have an overall reduction in your responsibilities. You don't want to be at severe neglect. It's just not good. Francesca, what?
Speaker 1:would you add. What's so interesting is I was thinking about sloth this weekend as we were talking about this session and some of the times, what is really interesting is why sloth happened. Why is someone doing these things? And I think the thing that I want to make a differentiation here is sometimes I find people are really exhibiting sloth like behaviors because they are in the center territory, and then sometimes it's doing it because they've got a lot of other things happening in their life, right, the problem is that it's very you can't tell as a team member, as a leader, as a company like why someone's doing this. So this is just literally, if these are the, if these are the behaviors that you're exhibiting, this is potentially a repercussions, no matter why it's happening.
Speaker 2:And I would say reach out to. If there's something that's driving that and you need support from your team, you have to ask for it. I remember many years ago when I was on a team there was someone who was chronically late and they didn't ever speak up and over time I remember them being put on a performance improvement plan about it. But come to find out once their job was at risk for that behavior. After several conversations they disclosed, for example, that on the outside they were taking care of a sick family member and their leader obviously worked with them on it. And I think you'll find a lot of the times that leaders not all leaders, we know, not everyone's kumbaya and like happy to help their team, but if you're with a good leader, they're going to help support you through something like that versus not communicating. So I think the key here is absolutely communication, if there's something causing some of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Listen, you don't need to disclose things right, but I think some things that potentially might be on the table would be communicating with your leader to see if you can get a more flexible work arrangement. Communicating with HR if you have to go out on a medical leave, all this happy jazz. So just something as a little caveat here to share, because all those things might be true.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely All right. If you don't check yourself on the high end over here, you're going to end up with criminal negligence. And here's the thing Once someone's reached this stage, it's almost certainly become a liability and illegal. At this stage of sloth, it's gross negligence, resulting in severe harm to the company or others, with potential legal consequences for you and for your org. It can look like failing to secure sensitive information because you didn't pause to encrypt a document in your email, right? It could look like ignoring safety protocols, leading to accidents. We see this often in the news about construction industry. For example, it the boeing 737 max crashes and the panel of they ignored the panel that flew off. I think what that alaska flight on alaska airlines did anyone else see that door fly off?
Speaker 1:and that was because it was like cutting safety protocols yeah, yeah also can we just say that poor kid that was sitting in the middle seat. With his t-shirt oh my gosh With his t-shirt. I know, I was just like, oh man, I would just yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, friends, I don't find the window seat anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I will still be. I will still do that, but I think what we found right. Boeing is being accused of cutting corners on safety protocols, and that starts from the top all the way down to the team, and, as a result, you're starting to see some of these things that are really bad. Let's talk about Enron.
Speaker 1:Oldie buddy, goodie but it's the perfect example.
Speaker 2:Right, they had institutionalized systemic accounting fraud. For example, debts and losses were put into entities formed offshore that weren't included in their company's financial statements, which ultimately led down to their downfall. Right, data breaches with human error factor into 68% of incidents of this, because people don't pay attention to an email that they're pulling together and they send it to Jane Smith instead of Joe Smith and suddenly Jane Smith has 5,000 social security numbers, like the Verizon breach that happened in 2024, just this past January. Missed delivery of email is actually the most common type of miscellaneous human error breach, making up more than 50% five 0% of data breaches, which is another reason to again slow down and prove what you're sending. So it's just not taking the time is part of sloth. The risk factor here, as you can imagine, is at max. This is code red red zone alert requires legal action, potentially financial restitution and damage control, to mitigate reputational harm to the company and, ultimately, to you and your brand if you're the center here. Understanding the spectrum of sloth in the workplace is essential for just maintaining a respectful and professional work environment, and by recognizing the different levels of sloth and the potential impact, individuals and orgs can both take proactive measures to prevent this high risk zone from ever happening.
Speaker 2:I want to do a quick pulse check here. We love to hear your stories. Again, if you're just joining us, we're talking about the seven deadly work sins. This is sloth, let us know. Come again. Dms are Vegas, so send us a note, and if you'd like to come up on stage, you can do that too. And, francesca, you have a story right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that I love about doing the pod is that we can call for stories and then we get real stories as well, and this one came in that it was actually somebody telling the story of this other person. We've changed names because we're Vegas and a few other things, so you can't trace it back to the person, but this is what happened. So let me tell you about this story of Sarah. Sarah had been with her company for about three years, starting as a reliable member of a marketing team. However, over time, her attitude toward work began to shift, and initially it was small things. She would procrastinate on things like non-critical tasks. Updating Salesforce or sending out follow-up emails was a little bit, I'll get it out tomorrow, forgot to do it today and she also would often take like extended coffee breaks or frequently be seen chatting with colleagues.
Speaker 1:Again, people started to notice and at first these behaviors. They seemed minor and really didn't seem to have an impact on the team, but overall her work quality remained somewhat acceptable right, so, things that we all do. But people started to notice, but as time passed, her chronic laziness began to escalate. She would do things like avoid taking on new projects, especially those that required like extra effort, extra creativity. When she was assigned challenging tasks, she would push back on deadlines, telling people she was way too busy or she didn't have enough money. She didn't have enough resources. Her team was slammed and her colleagues started noticing that she was consistently working below her capacity and they had to pick up the slack, which I know how that feels. I'm sure most people on this call knows how that feels, because it is frustrating, right, especially if it's not one or two instances. It's a pattern of behavior. She also, when she did contribute, her work was often rushed and lacked quality as well. There were a lot of errors and, despite several conversations with her manager who was trying to get in front of this, she basically was like, didn't see it as a problem and didn't change period. But here's the deal.
Speaker 1:Eventually her chronic laziness began to verge on severe neglect and so, going back to Mel, what you were talking about, you don't want to go from that stage two to now we're up in the high zone, which would be this severe neglect. Sarah ended up missing multiple deadlines for a major marketing campaign and it caused significant delay for her clients. The campaign was really critical to the company's quarterly goals as well, because you have to make your quarterly numbers and it had to be restructured at the last minute and other team members had to absolutely scramble to get it done. The problem here, too, is that clients started to notice inconsistencies in the work that the firm was doing. We're going to share more of the outcome of this story, but first we want to hear from you. What do you think about this situation? Have you ever experienced something like this, heck?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I experienced this at work before, I think, and it's always really. What's hard is it's almost when you're on a group project in college. That's what it feels like. Someone doesn't show up with their piece of the puzzle and you're like this could have been an A, but now it's a C. And then in the work world it starts to feel like you have especially when you have external client, like just any client, any stakeholder, and you know that you're not presenting the best work because of that. It just doesn't feel good and ultimately it doesn't just hurt the center's reputation, it hurts the team's reputation, right, and the company's right, and the company, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Listen, friends, if you just joined us, I'm Francesca, I'm here with Mel, we're from your Work Friends, and we're talking about sloth at work. In the beginning of this session, we talked about how sloth happens on a spectrum at work from minor slacking, which we all do all the time, to chronic laziness, and then, when you get into the high zone of sloth, it goes into severe neglect and then even criminal negligence. And what I want to talk about now is what happens if you find yourself on this spectrum and what do you do about it, because all of us, again, have been either the sinner or the victim of the sin. But what the hell do you do? Let's say you're feeling it, you're on the spectrum, you're a victim of the sin. And I also want to talk about what happens if you're a team leader and you are having this happen on your team, because this is where, really, from a management perspective, you really need to start stepping in. So let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:If you find yourself on the low end of the spectrum, which is minor slacking, right, those things that we periodically procrastinate on right, if you're the center, listen, we get it. This is actually super common. After all, we're all human and there's a lot going on in the world and in our lives, right. But the thing here is you don't want to get in the habit of slacking consistently, right, because it quickly moves into riskier business.
Speaker 1:Now's the perfect time to pause, reflect, if you find yourself in this, and maybe even consider what might be triggering you to do that right, so you don't end up in chronic laziness. Just check yourself a little bit here. If you're on the sidelines and maybe you see a work friend starting to go into this pattern and you think, oh man, they're doing this a little bit more and a little bit more. If you feel comfortable, we recommend maybe just chatting with them about it. Only if you're comfortable. You're not responsible for someone else's behavior Absolutely not, no, but we listen. I have had someone be like hey, I know you, and I get it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I get a lot of coffee breaks lately. We got to notice, yes, yeah, yeah, listen, I have absolutely been. We've all been, we've all gotten that talk right, just us, yeah, listen, I have absolutely been.
Speaker 2:We've all been, we've all gotten that talk right. Just us, yeah, Anyone.
Speaker 1:Please, yeah, it's just Melanai, it's absolutely Melanai. So, again, minor slacking. Here's where you just want to check it a little bit. But let's say you're moving up into that medium space of chronic laziness. If you're the center, this is where you really need to recognize triggers here. Listen, there may be a lot of reasons why you're experiencing sloth Okay, and I get it and at the same time, doing things like regularly missing deadlines or avoiding challenging assignments. It doesn't go unnoticed and it affects other people. And here's the deal You're starting to destroy your reputation, but you're also starting to negatively impact the organization here too. So this is where you really need to work on stopping the behavior.
Speaker 1:If you're the victim, you might consider talking to the center about how what they're doing is impacting your work right, or impacting how productive or how effective you can be. If you don't feel like you can have a conversation directly with them, that's totally fine, right, talk to a mentor, talk to a manager. If you don't even feel comfortable with that, you can always talk to somebody in HR about how to have that conversation. But again, these are levers that you could pull if you're the victim of someone's chronic laziness. Listen, if you're a team leader here.
Speaker 1:Friends, this is something I'd start to look out for and listen for as well, and if you see it going on, I need you to investigate the why. Okay, you got to put a kibosh on this here right before it turns into a situation where you need to put somebody on a performance improvement plan or, even worse, counsel them out, and so this is a time for you to investigate, this is a time for you to put the kibosh on it for the greater good of the team, for yourself and for the person that's the center as well. Right, because you might not know what they're going through. As Mel and I talked about earlier, sometimes people need to have a conversation about flexible work arrangements, need to have a conversation about med leave, and, as a leader, your job is to care for your team.
Speaker 2:This is one of the ways you can do that. Yeah Right, Mel, anything you'd add there? No, I love adding the team leader component because I think it's so critical at this stage for people on the team to feel supported, especially if your teammates are coming to the leader to express their concerns or how this is impacting them. If you're a people leader and you're not addressing it or you're avoiding it, you're helping to contribute to this toxic environment. So love that advice. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It festers a lot of schmutz.
Speaker 2:I'm just telling you yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you're the sinner, you're not completing your end of a contract, right? All of us that are salary employees or even contract employees as well we're exchanging work or services in return for compensation, right, and if you find that you're not holding up your end of the deal ie services or work you're in breach of contract, right. Again, this is a place where you need to get yourself back on track, because this is also a place where an organization has every right to put you on a performance improvement plan. Most likely, they have every right also to talk about disciplinary action and potential termination, again, if it's chronic. So, just FYI, that is going to potentially absolutely be on the table.
Speaker 1:If you're a sinner, again, if you're a victim of this, I would report it, right. I would talk about this with the leader, talk about it with HR Again, if you can document it as it's going along, because this is impacting you and it's impacting your team and the work. Again, if you're the leader here, this is where things like disciplinary action is necessary. If you didn't catch it in the chronic laziness, you absolutely have to catch it here, and we have seen everything from really strict performance improvement plans to potential termination on the table. Criminal negligence is our last illegal. We have an illegal part of all of these spectrums, which is fun and also not at all. Listen, every time you have to start talking about lawyering up, it's always ooh.
Speaker 2:What happened there?
Speaker 1:No bueno, Listen, if you're the sinner here, I hope you have money for a lawyer and for unemployment, because this is really hard to recover from and you don't ever want to find yourself here. Gross negligence resulting in severe harm to a company or others has potential legal consequences. Just period point blank. If you're on the sidelines or a victim here, if you see someone doing this or if you know of this as well, our recommendation do not confront this person at all. Go straight to your boss, Go straight to HR. That's it. That's it. What else, Mel? What else would you add? Anything else in any of those spectrums, from chronic laziness all the way up to severe negligence?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just make sure, I think I give this for every single sin. It's just, if you find yourself really recognizing some of your own behaviors in level one and level two, make sure, if you're at level two, that you're like, ooh, maybe I need to ask myself why. What's happening? What support do I need? What do I need? More of that will get me out of this space. What's putting me here? This is a self-reflection time, so you don't go any higher than that. So that's my only advice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that actually happened to me when I was really in my early twenties. I went through a just to be super personal. Here we go. You want to hear a good juicy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do, yes, I do.
Speaker 1:So what am I like? It doesn't matter. I'm in my early twenties, I'm a couple of years into working and I was going through a massive, like all bad breakup. Like I was taking it hard. I was in the hidey hole of feelings like just down, nah, and I was absolutely in stage two, like I was letting things drop. I just I couldn't focus on work. It was all of the things Right and it took me literally having my boss be like you're not doing well on this project. It wasn't about she didn't approach it as you're not doing well personally or emotionally, are you? Of course, you're biffing super hard. Get it together that I was like, oh shit, I'm not doing well, but like it happens Right, it absolutely happens, and I think that's where you want to check it so it doesn't turn into the severe neglect.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Someone that reminds me of a Sarah right, because we talked about that real story that our listeners sent in around Sarah, who, just basically, was just dropping the ball all over the place, and we left the story where her manager was trying to have conversations with her and she was just not having it at all, and then she completely biffed on a massive marketing project that the client was really starting to notice. This is not good. We don't like this product anymore. Here's what happened with Sarah At the end of the day because she biffed that project so hard. Basically, she got into a meeting with her boss in HR, and if you ever find yourself being called to a meeting with your boss in HR, and if you ever find yourself being called to a meeting with your boss in HR, it's probably not good. It's probably not good.
Speaker 1:And that's where Sarah found herself. She was placed on a performance improvement plan that she basically needed to step up in 30 days or face serious consequences. And guess what she did? She didn't do that, she didn't do it, she didn't do it, she didn't do it, she didn't do it, she didn't do it. So, basically, they took the caution of she got demoted to a different role and see if she could make it there. Here's the deal. There are no winners in this situation, and it shows, though, how something can quickly escalate from being low and minor all the way up through. You're getting either demoted, and sometimes I've even seen, if someone doesn't recover from a PIP, that they're terminated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, contrary to, I think, popular belief PIPs do it is to help turn things around. That is the goal. Most of the time, I think that's the goal, but it takes that work to do it. You really have to show that you're committed to turning it around. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I also think pips. On the other hand of it too, We've seen pips where someone's trying to get somebody termed Basically you need to. Oh yeah, they're not. So you put them on a pip. They got to do it on 30 days and if they don't do it, you have every legal recourse to terminate them. So it goes both ways. Ideally, someone's doing it as a true performance improvement plan, Like we want to see you get better, but again it takes two to tango. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, absolutely. We do have a couple of questions that have come in. Someone wrote I have a coworker who is regularly online late or in a virtual environment, and they're either online late or can't be reached during business hours. This often puts me behind on my work because I'm reliant on their portion of the contribution. How can I address this with them without coming across as confrontational?
Speaker 1:I think you send them a Slack message and you just say W-T-O-M.
Speaker 2:No, it depends on your relationship, right, Because that's going to help you really gauge. Will they just assume confrontation? What's their personality like? Are they open to it? I find that if you think someone may be confrontational or find it confrontational and that's not your intent, asking them if you can have a conversation and when a good time might be, so they're actually in the headspace to hear that message, just asking for permission, right? Hey, I have some feedback and I really want to talk about it. Set your intentions upfront for the conversation as one that wants to get to where you're supporting each other and you both feel supported. Francesca, what do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. In terms of setting up the conversation, I always find too, whenever I have to go into conversations where I feel like there's something like this is going to be a tough conversation, one is I would assume positive intent on their part. Right, I would not assume they're doing it, but just assume positive intent. You don't know what's going on. That's number one, and I wouldn't shy away from talking about what you need. For example, hey, for me to be able to work on this work, I need this XYZ from you or something. Is there a way you can do it? That might be also a way to go about it, as opposed to blaming them for not meeting a certain timeline. Absolutely agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think also just making it clear what the impact like downstream impact of that is, making it clear what the impact like downstream impact of that is, like ultimately how that impacts you, them, the team, the stakeholder I think that's important too.
Speaker 1:Okay, you could always do the situational behavior impact method of this is true this is true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good feedback, and clear is kind folks, so be clear, I. I think that's okay. We have another question. I'm a new manager and I'm noticing some low to medium behavior bubbling up on my team. I don't want to be the fun police, but it's starting to negatively nobody does but it's starting to negatively impact our team overall. We have one to two people who consistently come in late, coffee in hand, wait till the last minute for deadlines or they miss them altogether and they ask for an extension when it's due. How can I address this without killing my team's morale? Francesca, you've dealt with this before, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen, there's two things on this, one that I think is really important. One is you're going to have to nail this as the leader, right? This is something that I would argue that you'd want to get in front of. One of the things that I like to do is to establish, especially with at least my direct reports, what are behavioral norms Like. What are things that we're all going to agree to and we can all come up with those together, and it might be that somebody on the team or a couple of people on the team talk about, like respect for people's time, for example, or making sure that we're playing as a team, because those norms make it really easy for me to have a conversation with somebody.
Speaker 1:If I'm finding, like, hey, when you're coming in perpetually late, one of the things that I'm seeing is it's not respecting, like, the norms that we all set together, and I'm wondering what I'd like to see instead. Is X, y and Z right the next time you come in? Yeah, that's something that I think works really well, but this is a. This is the time where I know you don't want to be the fun police, but your job is to make sure that the team is cared for as a whole, and that might be a nice way to go about doing it. Mel, what have you done?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I'm actually a huge fan of the like, collaboratively created ground rules as a team. There there was a really cool tool. I don't know if it's available anymore, but plug for this tool if it's still out there. It's called the team canvas and it's free. It was free and I used to use this with, like, new project teams or even new teams that I came on, where you collectively outline those norms together and to your good point. Anytime something fell out of that or out of the mission, you're bringing it back to that and having the conversation around hey, this is what we promised to each other, this is how we show up, so how can we make that happen? And it becomes an easier conversation. It's also something that you can visit annually as a team to be like. Are these things still true? Is this what we still believe? And I think it's that collective buy-in up front. That really goes a long way. Team Canvas don't know if it's still out there. It was free, it was amazing. So hopefully, if anything, we'll try to link this in our show notes. So you guys have it, it's good, all right.
Speaker 2:We have one last question here. Can sloth also be considered when your direct supervisors and managers don't want to address difficult behaviors in the team setting, like harassment, inappropriate jokes, inner teammates sniping or interfering with work performance of other teammates. If they dismiss it or let the behaviors go on and on, how can that not be neglect? That is, it is absolutely the responsibility of your team leader to address those things and, as Francesca just noted, care for the team, the collective caring for the team. That means as a whole and for the individuals on them. So if that's happening and you're not getting the support you need from your leader, you may need to take that extra step and go to HR or their leader to talk about it. Francesca, what would you add to that?
Speaker 1:I think that was the perfect response. It is neglect. It's interesting. When I became a new manager, I remember I biffed a project so hard. As you can tell friends, I've biffed a lot in life. So there you go. Let me tell you about the 562nd time I failed. But I did something really shitty with my team when I was a new manager and I had a mentor pull me aside and said Francesca, having a team is a lot like having kids, it's not about you, it's about them. And I think that's what situations like this always remind me of. Which is this is not about me and my comfort as a leader, or this is about making sure that the team is healthy, that people feel safe. And, yeah, if you're not doing that and putting the kibosh on some of those behaviors, it's neglect. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriendscom. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends. Thanks, brad, thank you.