Dealing With Sloppy Work

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When you think of "sloppy work," you might imagine tasks performed in a careless or lazy way, documents that are full of mistakes, or actions that show no regard for team goals and objectives.

"Sloppy work" can also apply to conversations and work relationships. For example, people can demonstrate a lack of attentiveness when they make careless comments to clients.

Sloppy work can damage a person's career, a team's morale, and even an organization's success. Therefore, it's important to address the bad habits of team members who regularly turn in sloppy work.

In this article, we'll look at why careless work can be so harmful, and we'll explore what you can do to help people overcome this tendency.

Diagnosing Sloppy Work

People submit sloppy work for a number of different reasons. For example, they might feel rushed for time due to procrastination Add to My Personal Learning Plan or poor time management, or they might not realize the importance of double-checking their work. They might rush through tasks because they're excited to finish a project, or they may have low ambition Add to My Personal Learning Plan and not care about the quality of their work. Sloppy work might also indicate that someone doesn't enjoy a particular task ? or that they've "disengaged" from their job.

Sloppy work is subtly different from poor performance Add to My Personal Learning Plan. People who submit substandard work might succeed in other areas, while poor performers will often fall behind in all aspects of their role.
For example, a sales professional might excel with new clients, and he may be great at closing sales. However, he may also generate sloppy reports, because he is not interested in that task.

Sloppy, inaccurate, or careless work can become obvious in several different ways, and it can cause a lot of problems. For example:

Jan works in her organization's shipping department. She's a great team player, but she often multitasks, which means that she sometimes enters customer addresses into the database incorrectly. As a result, the company has delivered a number of shipments to the wrong location, which costs money and damages her organization's credibility.
Abran is a financial analyst. During month-end reporting, he often forgets to double-check his calculations, which means that he doesn't correct his errors. These mistakes affect the entire organization's financial reports, and his co-workers have to spend hours reviewing data to correct them. This affects Abran's reputation and lowers the team's morale.
Martina works in marketing. Yesterday, she finished writing the copy for a new national advertising campaign, and she submitted her work without triple-checking the layout and text. If her boss hadn't noticed her mistakes, a misspelled advert would have been published in several national trade journals, which would have been embarrassing for the company.
Sloppy work not only damages a person's career, but it can also negatively impact an entire team's morale, goals, objectives, and productivity. Careless work can cause health or safety hazards, and it can affect your organization's reputation.

This is why it's essential to address team members' sloppy or careless work.

Overcoming Sloppy Work Habits on Your Team

Use the strategies below to encourage your team members to avoid careless mistakes, build good habits, and take pride in their work.

1. Challenge Your Perceptions

Take a close look at your own perceptions before you approach a team member who you believe produces sloppy work. Are you objectively sure that her work is careless, or are your expectations unfairly high? Have you given her enough time to complete her tasks to the standard you expect? And is she performing poorly, or is her workload unrealistically heavy?

If you're a perfectionist, you're likely to expect perfection from everyone you work with. Often this is appropriate ? but sometimes it isn't. Learn how to overcome maladaptive perfectionism Add to My Personal Learning Plan, so that you don't set unrealistically high goals for yourself and for your team members.

2. Approach Your Team Member

There's a chance that your team member underestimates the importance of his mistakes, or he may not even be aware that he's making them.

Approach your team member privately, and tactfully Add to My Personal Learning Plan mention that you've noticed a decline in the quality of his work. Give some specific examples, and ask him if there's a problem.

It's possible that your team member doesn't recognize the driving purpose Add to My Personal Learning Plan of his work. When someone understands the meaning behind what they do, this can motivate them to improve. So, communicate why his work is important, and let him know who benefits from it.

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