Employee Write Up for Unprofessional Behavior

Education entails not only theory and practical application of sciences; rather it also inculcates ethical values and professional behavior to train every student for professional life ahead. Professional behavior builds on respect and compassion as its foundation. It further includes how you conduct yourself in a professional setting. Professional behavior opens doors for success.

Unprofessional behavior is when a person completely disregards other people at the workplace. Disrespecting others and lack of compassion rule unprofessional behavior. Such behavior creates annoyance for others in the workplace.

Unprofessional behavior includes but is not limited to:

Arriving late to work or missing important events and meetings
Not meeting deadlines or keeping promises
Using unprofessional language or tone
Harassing others
Showing disrespect to supervisors, subordinates or peers
Lying and making excuses
Blaming
Taking credit for something you didn’t do
Stealing
Making decisions that disregard merit

Lack of professionalism always works against a person’s personal and career growth. Professionalism is highly appreciated in work settings. Everyone wants to work with a person who has a strong sense of professionalism. When an employee is unprofessional, he/she not only affects their own productivity negatively, they also cause damage to an organization’s productivity and in some cases its reputation (particularly, when the employee is behaving unprofessionally with customers).

Some examples of unprofessional behavior are:

Telling racist or inappropriate jokes that make others uncomfortable
Mistreating customers and using poor language with them
Stealing other peoples lunch, money or belongings
Taking credit when you didn’t do anything on an assignment
Late arrival at important meetings or not showing up at all, making everyone wait for you
Not informing the office about leave or absence

How to deal with the unprofessional behavior of employees? When an employee is behaving unprofessionally, there are different ways of dealing with them, depending on your own designation:

If you are a coworker, it is much more difficult and frustrating to manage unprofessional behavior from a colleague. You can try one of the following:

Drop a subtle hint about the unprofessional behavior directly to the colleague
Talk directly to the co-worker telling them what is bothering you or affecting your work (be careful to remain professional)
Take the matter to your supervisor or HR

If you are a supervisor, you have more leverage than a coworker to control an employee’s unprofessional behavior:

You can discuss the situation with the employee making him/her aware of what unprofessional behavior he/she indulges in
You can reprimand/scold the employee (within reason)
You can put your remarks in his/her evaluation report
You can report the matter to the HR department

In order to avoid unprofessional behavior in the workplace, an organization can take the following steps:

Invest in a short induction program for new recruits to teach them the organizational culture and rules to be followed
Constantly revive core values and bring them up frequently during group meetings
Tie professional behavior to rewards and recognition awards
Deal with unprofessional attitude seriously to discourage future incidents
Issue warning letters in extreme case of unprofessional behaviors
Make examples of critical issues such as suspending employees for harassment, threatening and racist attitudes

Unprofessional behavior should not be allowed to pass away unnoticed except for minor one-off incidents. Employees must also perform their work professionally and try to uphold the highest moral and ethical conduct at workplaces.

Employee Write Up for Unprofessional Behavior

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