Russell HR Consulting

 

I have invented a new term for employees who engage in such appalling behaviour that their managers decide the only possible coping strategy is to stop managing them.

 

“Screamers” are so called because they’re like a bullying grown up version of Violet Elizabeth Bott of the Just William stories.  You know the one - “I’ll thcream and thcream til I’m thick”.

 

Just as nobody expects the Spanish inquisition, nobody really expects to be yelled at so viciously.  Such behaviour shocks line managers to the soles of their steel toe-capped boots and just recently, the virtual HR armour has come out and we have gone out to do battle with quite a few screamers (and revive their shocked managers).  The Russell HR team see screamers at work in a variety of situations.  For example, one client started the process of managing attendance with our help.  It had been done rather casually for a number of years, with the end result that several staff saw company sick pay as a form of extra holiday and their absence levels and associated costs were sky high. 

 

Return-to-work meetings were introduced, together with a trigger point to mark the start of an informal welfare process, before moving to formal discipline.  Most people, most of the time respond sensibly when you point out their absence and start to manage it. 

 

Not the screamers.  They go on the attack and verbally  abuse the manager holding the welfare meeting, calling names, sometimes engaging in foul language or sending the manager to Coventry.  Nice.  They make sure that everyone knows their displeasure.  In fact, their behaviour causes so much unpleasantness that most people creep around hoping it’ll stop.  And that’s the purpose of it.  It’s bullying behaviour calculated to distract a manager or deter him from doing his job. 

 

That’s what happened here.  Our screamer was truly obnoxious, but we stuck with it.  As her attendance had failed to meet the agreed targets we told her that we were moving to the first stage of the formal process.  Apparently it was the thought of seeing the HR Headmistress that did it (Wot me? J). I like to shed a little light into other people’s lives!

 

The screamer described the Headmistress in somewhat colourful industrial terms and tendered her resignation.  The manager refused to accept it initially saying that she had resigned when she was upset.  However as the screamer failed to turn up for several days afterwards, we wrote saying that we concluded that she did indeed intend to resign and we therefore accepted it.  We’re told that already life is so much nicer without her.

 

It takes real nerve to stick to your guns and carry something through when someone’s carrying on like that. But unlike Peter Andre (who has got out of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!) that’s what we do.  If you do, you’ll be rewarded.  Employees who have no intention of meeting your requirements will either shape up or leave.  It is extremely rare to have to take someone through the whole disciplinary process and dismiss them kicking (and, of course, screaming).

 

So if you have a screamer creating havoc in your workplace, give us a call and we’ll put on our armour and come and sort him or her out.