I’m sure you’ve overheard a coworker on the phone using a pleasant, sugary sweet tone but then mutter a few expletives the moment the call ended. What if you were the person on the other end of the phone? What are your employees’ real attitudes towards you, your company, and their work?

Do your employees mask their true feelings? Few bad apples are brazen enough to do be outright belligerent and disrespectful to your face. Most will be business-like and seemingly normal in person, but what happens behind your back? When they talk to their coworkers or friends outside of work, what do you think they say?

Read more: 5 Frequent Causes of Employee Turnover

If you want your workforce to meet their goals, and even give a little extra through their own discretionary effort, then persistent negative attitudes need to be addressed.

In the best scenario, you want your employees to be genuine in their actions and words. An engaged and content employee isn’t distracted by what they don’t like and can focus on doing the best job possible. Meanwhile, disgruntled employees with gripes against their boss, coworkers, work, or work environment will lose focus on their tasks and redirect their efforts and energy towards complaining.

Read more: In a World of Volatility, Invest in Employee Engagement

5 Ways to Measure Employee Attitudes

Malcontents with snarky attitudes could poison the minds of their coworkers, thus harming the performance of others. Here are five ways to measure your employees’ attitudes and avoid being misled by employee masks:

1. Pre-hire assessments to identify behavioral issues

This is the best opportunity to scrutinize a potential candidate’s behavioral tendencies before you offer them a job. Probe how they respond to certain situations to gauge how they’ll act on the job. These assessments offer a glimpse of the potential hire beyond the resume and behind the mask worn during an interview.

Read more: Impacts of pre-hire assessments on candidate experience

2. Internal employee attitude surveys

Your employees might put on a good face or be good actors while on the job. Conducting periodic employee attitude surveys gives them an opportunity to vent and provide constructive feedback regarding their true feelings for their work, the work environment, and their colleagues and managers. If you conduct employee surveys, be prepared to receive negative feedback and act on it accordingly. If you choose to ignore it (or retaliate), then it was not only a wasted effort, but would likely sink attitudes further.

3. 360-degree feedback for managers and executives

Many people are reluctant to directly criticise their boss or offer views to the contrary, which leads to an environment of “Yes Men” and executive blind spots. If you’re a manager, try to foster a culture in which your staff knows they can be candid with you. But managers gain the most benefit from 360-degree surveys, which gather feedback from their staff, bosses, colleagues, and maybe even customers or vendors.

Read more: Understand the fundamentals of 360-degree feedback

4. Building informal networks

How connected are you within your workplace? Informal networks are essential to keeping your finger on the pulse of the workplace. What’s on people’s minds? What’s occupying their attention and concerns? If you only talk to those with whom your work directly, then you’re likely missing out on valuable chatter which reflects the workplace mood and environment. Are you in the know or out of touch?

5. Coaching your employees builds stronger bonds

Coaching not only provides regular feedback between a manager and her employees, but during that process it allows for a deeper relationship to form. If a boss is always cold, distant, and unapproachable, then they’re unlikely taking the time to provide and receive feedback from their staff (which leads to blind spots, negative attitudes from employees, poor performance, etc.). But the act of coaching is in itself a form of communication that can help to tear down barriers and improve attitudes.

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