There is a difference between a difficult employee and a toxic one - not only do they cause harm but they also spread their toxic behaviour to others to spoil the entire team.
Most of the time people don’t realise how destructive they are. They are too focused on their own behaviour and needs to be aware of the broader impact. That’s why it’s crucial to give direct and honest feedback — so they understand the problem and have an opportunity to change. In difficult times such as now, business organisations cannot tolerate such people at all.
Toxic employees produce a negative working environment that can affect the entire workforce. The cost of employing a wrong person could be very high though there is no perfect science to measure the exact impact.
But you know with your experience the serious negative consequences of employing the wrong people. The best you can do as a manager is to ensure that you only employee good people. Many managers are uncomfortable addressing the issue of a “toxic employee.”
First challenge
It is a fact of managing people that not every employee will be excellent at every job. The first challenge is separating your employees into the following groups: star players, good employees, bad employees and toxic ones.
If your company is larger than 20 people, there is a really good chance that you have at least one toxic employee.
The best is to avoid toxic employees by hiring carefully. If you made a mistake in hiring, then you have to understand why the employee isn’t performing well.
It can be a lack of training, a poorly defined role, lack of feedback, shifting organisational priorities or something deeper - these are organisational factors which the leaders are accountable for.
In terms of personal factors, there are many different reasons why employees behave less than acceptably in the workplace. Sometimes they are under stress, either at home or at work; sometimes they have marital or other family problems; sometimes they’re in the wrong job.
Most of these difficulties can be worked through in time. But bad attitudes require a different approach.
Stress
It is important to understand that keeping a toxic employee on the staff is not only hurting your company, but hurting that person as well.
The majority of toxic employees already know that they are not the best person for the job.
Coming to work every day with this knowledge is frustrating and stressful. It is likely that this work related stress infiltrates the employee’s personal life.
A manager who sincerely cares about the people he or she is managing must be willing to take action to help an employee move into a job where they can be a star player or good employee.
What would happen to your team’s efficiency and effectiveness if you replace your toxic employee with someone as good as your star player? The answer will be different for every manager who reads this article, but there will certainly be common themes: free up time to become better leaders, show the rest of my team that good performance was recognised, bad employee’s replacement increases team’s throughput by a few folds.
It’s like cancer
When cancer enters the body, it grows and spreads throughout if gone undetected and untreated. A toxic employee can be like cancer within a company. Strong negativism, poor attitude, backbiting, and incompetence can spread quickly within any organisation.
Co-workers of a toxic employee notice the issues and typically try to fight off resistance catching the negative traits. However, such traits are contagious and can severely hurt or even kill a company. A toxic employee will eventually affect your employees, business partners, customers, and product or service quality – the potential damage is huge.
If you have tolerated a toxic employee, and the «cancer» has spread in your company, there is only one way to correct the problem - you need to get rid of your toxic employee. After the dismissal, you must address your remaining staff.
Not being candid about the justification for firing can cause a fast wave gossip to spread throughout your company. Make sure that you do not bash the toxic employee in any form of communication.
Be respectful of the dismissed employee and let your remaining staff, who may have an after-hours relationship with that person, know that you hope he or she quickly finds a good job.
Life doesn’t stop at the office door, and every employee has personal and professional challenges that can lead to stress, frustration, and negativity. But by working closely with human resources to establish, communicate, and enforce expectations for employees’ behaviour, you can help create a work environment where people know their roles, strive for cohesion rather than negativity, and can get the help they need to support your business’ goals for profitability and positivity, especially at these most difficult times.