Occasionally, an employee is the self-appointed social chairman of
the department. She makes a point of doing little things for coworkers’ birthdays and will spend weeks preparing for the employee picnic. Charitable events give her carte blanche, she feels, to spend excessive amounts of work time raising money or coordinating volunteers. After all, it’s for a good cause.

If this behavior works well for management and coworkers, then
don’t say a word. When the nonwork activity begins to affect productivity too much, however, it’s time for an intervention.

Interventions
• Share the wealth—and the responsibility. Meet with the employee
and tell her that her contributions in the past have been greatly
appreciated. Add that it is unfair for management to expect her to do all this on her personal time and that doing it on company time is not acceptable, as it affects productivity. As a solution, tell her that you are asking that her coworkers assume some of these duties. Be specific. Tell her that Martin will do the blood drive and that Ellen will coordinate the picnic. Any other activities, like birthdays and showers, must be conducted over lunch in order to better use time. You might want to leave the employee one activity to head up, since withdrawal is likely to be painful and possibly demoralizing.

• Establish policies regarding birthdays and other social events. If
birthdays and showers have come to mean an hour of lost time for
every employee, you may need to establish some policies. Before you establish these policies, however, first determine that this lost
time is truly a problem. Companies pay big money for teambuilding
events. If an occasional cake party in the break room is helping to make your office a great place to work, you have gotten off cheap. And cutting back on social events is probably going to make you look like Scrooge, no matter how you handle it.

Taken From: 201 Ways to Turn Any Employee Into a STAR Performer