When you think about keeping people in line, the natural human tendency is to think about what would happen when a crisis happens. When such a terrible situation unfolds, you tend to find that people are very hard to keep motivated and to keep working constructively when they tend to either slack off or panic.
This kind of problem is a lot easier to solve before it ever happens in the first place. When you think about a problem, you have to see about stopping it from ever happening, and this process begins when you first hire someone. The hiring process itself is all about weeding out the people who are the most likely people to cause a problem to start with. When you’re first interviewing people, your technique is going to need an element of figuring out who may cause a morale or other problem down the line and who probably won’t do such a thing.
When you see the trouble makers to be in the interview, you have to decide if their competence will ultimately compensate your company for their rebellious tendencies. If they do, you can always take them on as freelancers or in a more limited capacity instead of hiring them on as full-time salaried employees. This may sound a bit strange, but there are plentiful advantages to this strategy. You won’t have to pay them benefits or guarantee them a certain amount of pay, but you will be able to get the benefits of their work if you keep them in line from the start.
