When we see other employees do something that’s clearly against the rules or bad for business, don’t most of us look around and hope someone else saw it, heard it, or was involved in it, so we don’t have to address it?
There are some instances, such as embezzlement and industrial espionage where you are bound to report what’s going on. But what about the vast grey area, from annoyances to sabotage by misleading – issues where you’d just like someone to say to the perpetrator, “Stop kidding yourself, we know what you did, and we don’t expect you to do it anymore?” This is especially important in a small business where everyone’s actions have a more profound effect on other employees and the very profitability of the company.
Most people opt for the oblique approach – notification without identification. What if you saw someone out to dinner with his girlfriend, and the next day saw an expense report left in the copier, misrepresenting the meal as a client dinner? Would you slip a “You can’t be serious!” note on a Post-it on to the copy, in the hopes that it gets back to the diner? Or put an “I know who you are” note in your sandwich in the office fridge, one of the tactics recounted to the Washington Post by an office worker tired of her office’s “lunchtime bandit”. Tell us your stories of how you’ve successfully (or unsuccessfully!) nudged people to change without making the solution more unpleasant than the original problem.
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