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Poor conduct - how should it be dealt with?

From time to time some people have difficulties with their attitudes, behaviours and conduct at work. The problem for us as managers is when this behaviour has an impact on the work performance of that employee or on others working with them.
These difficulties can express themselves in many different ways,for example, anger or frustration, bad language, withdrawal of communication, non-cooperation with colleagues, inappropriate actions or negligence in performing the job tasks, disregarding of reasonable requests or instructions. The impact of these inappropriate or unreasonable behaviours can be felt by work colleauges, customers, suppliers, and possibly but less obviously by their direct management. Any of these are warning signs that a manager could spot and then pick up on. Often the behaviour is not exhibited directly for a manager to experience and observe but information about it is brought to your attention by a formal complaint from a customer, supplier or colleague or by informal feedback given to you.
So what action do you take as the person's line manager? Should you just ignore it until or unless a formal complaint reaches you or should you wade in and confront the employee directly about it?
The first thing to do is to make an objective assessment of the nature, seriousness and probability of the complaint having some substance. You need to consider who has given you this information, why have they done so, what behaviour have you observed from the individual, how well are they performing in their job, who else might have observed or experienced this behaviour who you could discretely ask about it. Of course if the allegations are of a serious enough nature to constitute gross misconduct or endanger the health and safety of any employees, customers and suppliers then you should take action immediately, if necessary suspend the employee and launch an investigation into the incidents.
Fortunately most examples of poor conduct do not constitute gross misconduct but none the less they do need to be assessed and followed up. Ultimately if the employee needs to change this behaviour then they need to be made directly aware of the examples of their inappropriate attitude or behaviour, their impact on others and on the work and what your expectations of them are. You should also ask about any other personal or work difficulties that may be affecting them. Often this type of direct feedback and supportive conversation will be sufficient to allow the employee to become more aware of and able to adjust their behaviours. If it doesn't then you may need to enlist the guidance and support of your own manager or of the HR department. What ever approach you take you do need to make the employee aware of their responsibility to conduct themselves properly at work and set out what these standards are - you should not just ignore it and hope that it will go away!