The Plague of the Disengaged Employee

In most offices across the country, you can feel the disengagement from the employees before you even set foot in the building. Large corporations seem to breed these types of employees in cube farms, gazing glassy-eyed at their computers for 8 hours a day, waiting for the clock to strike 5 and they can get in their mid-sized cars and head home.

When you compare today’s office world with the movie Office Space, you can see the similarities. When the independent contractors were hired to “fix the glitch” in the company morale, they were referring to an employee named Milton. Milton is not an example of a disengaged employee, but his situation is—Milton showed up to work each day, but he shouldn’t have been paid, much like disengaged employees in the workplace.

Employees that were once high performers but suddenly become disinterested and bored with their job are considered “disengaged employees”. These employees show a decrease in production, an increase in negativity, and an overall unpleasant addition to the workplace. Their bad attitudes spread like wildfire where otherwise well-performing workers seem to empathize and take on the views of the disengaged employee. These disengaged employees once found comfort in new jobs or positions, but in the current economy can no longer find the new positions they seek. Instead they stay at their job, ever increasingly becoming a thorn in the company’s side.

These disengaged employees show many signs of their disconnectedness from their job, company, and even coworkers. These employees seem to prey on their employer’s disorganization and incompetency and use that to their own advantage.

Some examples of disengaged employee behavior would be their excellent use of company time as their own time. First, disengaged employees tend to spend most of their work time surfing the Internet and taking bathroom breaks. These employees love to find time wasters to keep them from doing the job they’re supposed to be doing, and they’ve become very good at that. In fact, most disengaged employees have made an art out of avoiding any work or task that they might be given. Sometimes these employees will fake their schedule to avoid doing the work they may know might be coming to them.

Second, these employees also spend a great amount of time making their boss, manager, supervisor or employer into the enemy. Their uncanny ability to put a negative take on everything the company or manager does makes them particularly hard to please and unpleasant. Third, these employees strive to prove themselves right and everyone else wrong, which makes them even more miserable. They even go so far as to beg to work at home, or telecommute, as a way to avoid work altogether. They often make excuses to head out early and try their best to get out of as much work as possible before the boss notices.

And lastly, the disengaged employee feels as if they’re surrounded by people who are unable to do their jobs, thus making their job that much harder and their life that much more miserable.

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