Habits That Make You Look Unprofessional at Work

Do your colleagues and superiors give you a strange look? Is their behavior towards you different?  Does it make you feel guilty?

If the answer to these questions was a ‘Yes’, then maybe you should analyze yourself and try to think what might be the reason behind it. Where could you possibly be going wrong? 

Work ethics and professionalism are two key factors that talk volumes about an individual at work. Professionalism is an attribute that holds immense importance in the corporate world. Hence, conducting yourself well at your workplace is crucial for your professional growth.

A few habits that can tarnish your image, need to be arrested on a priority. These include:

Entering the Office Late

Punctuality till date holds high importance. Entering office panting heavily or running into an ongoing meeting is extremely unprofessional. Such actions show that you don’t respect others’ as well as your time. Running late once or twice is still fine if you have a genuine reason, but if this becomes a pattern, you have to put an end to it immediately. Remember, reaching before time is always better than being late.

Dressing Inappropriately

Agreed that the corporate world is gradually becoming flexible where many offices have given the freedom to do away with formal clothing, however, you must at least look presentable. How you look, tells the opposite person a lot about what kind of person you might be. Walking into a corporate office or a meeting wearing casual denim, shorts, oversized t-shirts, and slippers/floaters look very shabby and create an impression of you being a lazy and laid-back person. On the other hand, if you walk in wearing formals, or just decent and well-ironed clothes, it speaks of you as someone who is serious about work.

Talking and Gossiping

Constantly bending towards the person sitting next to you to chitchat, giggle and gossip about others in the office or spending time talking on your colleagues’ desk, is the worst thing you can do. Leaving your own work and gossiping about people is a very shallow thing to do especially in an office environment. You are not just gossiping or chattering but are also disturbing others and distracting them from work.

Constant Bellyaching

Having a negative approach towards work and constantly cribbing will heavily affect the quality of your work. It will not just affect you but also those around you. Cribbing is a serious strength killer and can result in others feeling less motivated towards work. Too much of negativity will also repel your coworkers. The more negative you get, the more difficult it will get for you to shift to become positive.

Excessive Use of Cell Phones

Employers today are complaining of employees constantly being on their phones and more on social networking sites during work hours. Attending too many personal phone calls, continuous texting, taking selfies, watching videos/web series, scrolling facebook feeds, affects the outcome of the work.

Profanity

This is a complete no-no! Work stress is common and is faced by all, but using curse words in the workplace is not at all acceptable and speaks low of you. Hurling abuses and swearing, for many, is a cool thing to do, but it’s clearly not. Abusing can result in actions being taken by the authorities. You must strictly refrain from uttering curse words.

While these are just few of the habits that need to be put an end to, there are many others as well that you need to be careful about.