People Are Sharing 30 Red Flags That Show That A Coworker Is Useless Or Out Of Their Depth

In order to find out how we could best deal with a colleague who procrastinates at work, and how they can affect the overall productivity in the workplace, we spoke with Christine Mitterbauer, a licensed and ICF-approved career coach and serial entrepreneur. “This can be very frustrating, especially if it affects your own work. Confronting your coworker up front can backfire, though, so you need to go about this more subtly,” she said.

“One of the first things to try is to ask your coworker if you can help them with something. If they say no, tell them if they ever have any questions or feel stuck, you’d be happy to help them along,” Christine explained and added that “Procrastination is often caused by overwhelm and because the person doesn’t know where to start.” That’s why, she argues, telling them they can always come to you for support can be helpful and solve some of the procrastination.

For those who’re wondering if it is often a good idea to complain about your colleague to management, Christine said that “sometimes we might have no other choice, but it’s not the first thing to do.”

She explained: “Before you complain to a manager, you should be able to demonstrate what you have done yourself to solve the problem. Did you offer help and support to your colleague, and have you recorded down several incidents in detail so you can back up your complaint to your manager? Always put yourself in other people’s shoes and try and see things from their perspective: What could be the reason that your colleague is procrastinating? If you think really hard, how can you help solve this before turning to your manager?”

Moreover, in terms of taking on the manager’s perspective, they’re probably very busy and have lots of other challenges to solve already. “What will they think about you for coming to them with a problem you might have been able to solve, or at least initiated to solve, yourself?”

Having said that, Christine confirmed that unproductive colleagues may damage the productivity of the whole team or department. However, she stayed positive and assured us that there are a lot of things you can try to help, before it even comes to this.

“Once you have exhausted offering your own support, been patient and slept on the challenge, it might be time to tell your manager about it. But prepare well for this meeting—make sure you can explain what all you have done to solve the problem yourself, how exactly the problem has affected the team and/or the company’s performance, include time and dates when this happened.”

Christine’s advice is also to make sure you comment on the behavior of the incompetent colleague, not their personality traits or anything else that might make you be seen as unprofessional.