Superstar hires don’t make up for toxic employees.
This is the conclusion of a Harvard Business School report. The researchers looked at over 50,000 workers at 11 different firms to evaluate the benefits of highly productive employees versus the cost of toxic ones.
What makes an employee “toxic”? The HBR study defines toxic employees as workers “that engage in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” You can probably come up with one or two (hopefully not more than that) from your career without thinking too hard. We know who they are because of how they effect us, our coworkers, and our customers.
Hopefully you can also identify a few high performers. For the purposes of the study, HBR defined “superstars” as the top 1% most productive workers.
The study found the average cost of employing a “toxic employee” was approximately $12,489, while the average benefit of employing a “superstar” was approximately $5,303. This means you have to hire more than 2 superstars to overcome the cost of just one toxic worker. Not so confident in your ability to hire top 1% superstars? It takes 6 top 25% performers to make up for the cost of one toxic worker.
The takeaway? You will never hire your way out of a toxic worker problem. You need to pay more attention to identifying, coaching, and (if coaching doesn’t work) removing toxic employees. You need to do anything you can to avoid hiring toxic workers in the first place.
The HBR study proposes one key pattern for identifying toxic workers: they are overconfident in their own performance, care more about themselves than others, and will claim rules should be followed (even though they are most likely to break them). From the study:
“In particular, we found consistent evidence that those who seem overconfident in their abilities, who are self-regarding, and who claim rules should be followed, are more likely to become toxic workers and break company and legal rules.”
This Entrepreneur article outlines 5 classic types of toxic employees, their worst traits, and some ideas for coaching them out of their toxic behavior. Here are the highlights:
- The Hot Mess. Defined as incompetent, erratic, and unreliable, the Hot Mess can tank productivity for the whole team. Worst traits: learned helplessness, disorganization, lack of credibility, passivity, resistance to change. Antidotes: offer extra training, introduce improvement plans, foster awareness with frequent check-ins, provide support, encourage screening for ADD and related issues.
- The Slacker. Finding ways to avoid working at work is a full time job, and they don’t seem to care what anyone thinks about it. Worst traits: low motivation, lack or regard for deadlines, bad timekeeping, wasting time online, absenteeism. Antidotes: uncover hidden resentments, provide clear expectations, demand accountability, impose unscheduled visits and reviews, recognize and reward effort.
- The Martyr. Defined as a worker who insists on doing everything themselves. They’re hard workers, and they make sure everyone knows it. Worst traits: doesn’t know limits, complains often, comes to work when sick, undermines confidence or team members, prone to burnout. Antidotes: enforce delegation, foster a collaborative rather than competitive workplace, encourage PTO, introduce stress management measures.
- The Socialite. Funny, entertaining, and everybody’s best friend, the socialite spends most billable hours conversing with coworkers and taking coffee breaks. Worst traits: loud and distracting, lack of focus, immature approach to life, unprofessional affect, fans of office drama. Antidotes: provide regular redirection, define social times and activities, be clear about appropriate behavior, harness communication skills, channel interpersonal energy.
- The Sociopath. Poisons atmosphere and creates a hostile environment for the entire team. Worst traits: bullying behavior, disregard for protocol, issues with authority, interpersonal problems, manipulation and sabotage. Antidotes: provide a safe and supportive environment, take employee complains seriously, trust your instincts, carefully document negative behaviors.
Toxic employees need more of your attention, and tend to create more toxic workers. So it is critical to act on them or remove them. But to decide your next action you must clearly understand what is happening and whether it is coachable or not. As leaders we often find ourselves so busy that we miss problems that are right under our nose. This is why it’s so important to be approachable.
Do you have any experience with toxic employees? Do any of the 5 classic types ring a bell? How about the overconfident, self-regarding and self-proclaimed rule follower? How did you deal with them? Share with us in the comments.
