How to Handle a Disgruntled Employee: A Guide for Leaders

A disgruntled employee can disrupt workplace harmony, dragging down morale and productivity while creating ripple effects that impact the entire organization. To rebuild a positive and motivated team, leaders must take a thoughtful approach to addressing employee dissatisfaction and resolving underlying issues. Delve into the following paragraphs to understand the potential reasons employees become disgruntled, its consequences, and how to handle a disgruntled employee.

A disgruntled employee is an unhappy team member who is frustrated about the job, the employer, the team, or responsibilities, negatively impacting the overall organizational performance. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report 2024, “only 23% of employees are engaged while 62% are not engaged, and 15% actively disengaged.” If left unnoticed and sufficiently addressed, the disengaged behavior can turn to disgruntled behavior. Employees can turn disgruntled from dissatisfaction with company policies, a series of incidents, or a single event offending the employee. Some of the common reasons why employees turn disgruntled are:

• Lack of Recognition: According to the Development Academy, “69% of unhappy employees cite not feeling valued by their employee as the main reason.”
• Subjectivity or biases toward employee perspectives
• Poor management: Ineffective leadership, lack of clear direction, or micromanagement
• Work overload and inflexible schedules
• Lack of transparency in communication
• Low payment and lack of incentives
• Lack of growth opportunities: Offering no training, skill development, or promotions
• Toxic work environment: workplace conflicts, harassment, and negative culture

When employees become disgruntled, it can lead to immense negative consequences impacting the individual, the team members, and the whole organization alike. The following are the major consequences of employees becoming disgruntled.

A disgruntled employee loses motivation to work forward to goal attainment decreasing the efficiency and overall output. This can lead to increased absenteeism, high turnover rates, and poor customer relations, affecting overall team collaboration and performance.

When productive employees feel they are unvalued or unheard, or experience biases, low payment that does not reciprocate industry standards, lack of professional growth, or work-life imbalance, they are likely to turn disgruntled and begin to withdraw their efforts. The employees would probably seek new opportunities with the competitors, causing the organization to lose valuable talent and experience.

Loss of high performers and reduced productivity as a result of the disgruntled behavior of employees can damage the reputation of the organization. These individuals would probably spread negative reviews about the organization through social media or job platforms like Glassdoor or Ambitionbox discouraging potential job candidates from joining the organization thereby harming the employer brand and affecting the business.

Two serious consequences of employees turning disgruntled are increased errors and intentional underperformance. With a lack of motivation due to inadequate recognition and subjectivity, the focus and commitment decline leading to increased errors, careless mistakes, and intentional underperformance disrupting overall operational efficiency.

Frustration and dissatisfaction in employees can cause disagreements with colleagues and managers and even lead to disputes lowering team morale. Open and transparent communication is imperative to manage workplace conflicts.

Disgruntled employees might file formal complaints against the organization to expose internal misconduct and unethical practices.

When employees are disgruntled, they feel disinterested in embracing the organizational change and may express reluctance toward progress creating challenges for the management.

Due to the intense consequences of employees becoming disgruntled from reduced productivity to reputational damage, managers must adopt the necessary strategies to handle them. The major tips on how to handle a disgruntled employee are:

A necessary step to handle a disgruntled employee is to review the situation and identify the underlying issues. This includes looking for signs of disengagement, absenteeism, work conflicts, or reduced productivity by monitoring performance and peer review and undertaking appropriate decisions to resolve them.

Employees feel disgruntled when they realize there is no room for career progression in their organization. Apart from encouraging internal promotions, discussing career goals with the employees, providing training and development, offering diverse learning opportunities, stipends, and grants, and paid membership to professional associations can be given to prevent disgruntling of employees and effective handling.

When employees feel that they are not valued, or their ideas and perspectives are not sufficiently heard, it can lead to dissatisfaction. To handle a disgruntled employee, leaders can actively acknowledge their concerns, publicly or privately acknowledge the hard work and achievements of the employees, offer personalized performance-based rewards such as bonuses, paid time off, and other incentives. In addition, employees feel that they are valued if offered a platform to share their ideas showing them their input matters.

Providing mental support for a disgruntled employee can help them feel heard and valued. This can be performed by offering a safe space to express their concerns, encouraging open dialogue, offering Employee Assistance Programs and wellness programs, and adjusting workloads to reduce being overwhelmed.

Another essential tip for handling a disgruntled employee is to address workplace toxicity and set boundaries to prevent it. This includes observing toxic behaviors, encouraging confidential channels for employees to report toxicity, establishing a strong code of conduct in every operation, and communicating the consequences of toxicity such as decisive actions.

Cultivating trust and clearing misunderstandings is essential to handling a disgruntled employee. This can be done by fostering open and transparent communication regarding company policies, and professional expectations, encouraging honest feedback, and sharing regular organizational updates. This can de-escalate tensions and create a culture of an engaged and collaborative workforce.

An unhappy team member frustrated about the job is a disgruntled employee and can disrupt the overall organizational operations. Employees can turn disgruntled due to lack of appropriate recognition at the organization, subjectivity or biases of the leadership towards some employees, poor management, work overload or inflexible schedules, lack of transparency in communication, low payment and inadequate rewards, lack of career growth opportunities, and toxic work environment.

When an employee turns disgruntled, it can lead to consequences such as reduced productivity, loss of high performing staff, reputational damage, increased errors, intentional underperformance, workplace conflicts, legal and compliance issues, and resistance to organizational change. The organizations must adopt tips on how to handle a disengaged employee such as reviewing the situation, offering opportunities for career progression, providing recognition and rewards, addressing toxicity and setting boundaries, offering mental support, and promoting open and transparent communication.

By understanding the root causes of being a disgruntled employee and addressing them with appropriate solutions, organizations can turn dissatisfaction and disengagement into opportunities for growth, collaboration, and a healthier workplace culture.