Employee Insubordination

Dishonesty
Employee insubordination often begins with a bunch of white lies which are easily recognisable. These lies should be inquired at their initial stage otherwise the employee would feel encouraged to take you for granted and would continue to tell you stories without actually making efforts. 

Incompetence
The incompetent employee, with slow or negligible learning speed, will become a live example of employee subordination unintentionally. As such employees are likely to have difficulty in understanding the manner of work, they would be more prone to insubordination. 

Resistance to Change
The employee who has problem with changes in his/her work habits and work timings is more likely to exhibit insubordination. This employee may have a negative attitude towards new changes installed in the system, with overreaction to such changes. 

Lack of Dependability
If the employee is not an accountable one, surely you are going to have at least one case of employee insubordination in your organisation. If an employee consistently shows lack of dependability whether naturally or deliberately, the problem of insubordination will exist in the organisation. 

Decline in Employee Productivity
Many might not agree, but it is a bitter truth that the insubordination from even a single employee will lead to decline in the overall performance and productivity of the organisation. The person in question will set his own rules at workplace including time to finish the delegated assignments and workspace. Things would get even worse when such a behaviour is ignored as other employees may begin to reflect the same behaviour. 

Rise in Employee Safety Issues
Do you think an employee rejecting all the set of rules, would follow safety rules? Probably not! The person, if get injured for working without using any safety measure, can take you to court and you may have no measure to protect yourself and the image of your company. You may be liable for not enforcing the rules. Also, other employees may also have to bear the consequences for insubordination of one. 

Reduction in Employee Morale
If ignored to a significant level, such insubordination can lead to drastic reduction in the morale of employees. When the violation of rules by a particular employee gets neglected again and again, other employees may feel frustrated and may file a lawsuit against your organisation for being biased.

Be Prompt
The promptness in announcing and implementing the policies and procedures will make the task half done. When employees see prompt actions being taken by you against indiscipline, they would become cautious in doing anything variant from what is expected. 

Have a Systematic Approach
Whether it is a new department in your organisation or an old one; remember to have an unbiased and systematic procedure to handle unexpected behaviour from employees. It would be better if your employees know the policies and procedures along with the consequences of variations. 

Understand Your Employees
Many a times, an employee working perfectly throughout the year begins to reflect undesirable behaviour that includes reluctance to abide by the laws framed by you. In such cases, you are supposed to show HR qualities. When you try to analyse his behaviour, you may come across a significant issue disturbing his mindset in turn, spoiling the workplace environment. 

• Examine the Situation. There may be some hidden factors provoking the employee to work against rules imposed by you.
• Discuss with personnel and HR department, presenting the issue as a case study for them. Let them find the unique solution to the problem and implement the most pragmatic one.
• Speak to the employee in question and try to sort out the issues. Maintain the decorum and try to understand his view point. Make sure that the communication does not get turned into a heated argument.
• When nothing works, painful step of terminating the services of employee is a must to save the organisational amity and productivity.