Toxic workers could be costing your workplace millions of dollars

EVERY workplace has them, and every workplace pays a steep price for it. These employees aren’t just annoying you - they’re costing millions of dollars.

WHETHER you’re a boss, a worker or an owner, these people can ruin your workplace, life or company.

They come into your business, and some staffers immediately start looking to leave because of them. They can destroy morale and eventually your company.

They are toxic workers — described as “overconfident” and often “unethical” and “corrupt” — and they can cost millions of dollars in lost productivity and profits.

Now a major business school has finished a study measuring their effect.

“A toxic worker is defined as a worker that engages in behaviour that is harmful to an organisation,” according to the Harvard Business School study, Toxic Workers.

“In extreme cases,” the study said, “aside from hurting performance, such workers can generate enormous regulatory and legal fees and liabilities for the firm.”

Toxic employees, according to a blog posting by Accountemps, are a particularly big threat to a small company.

“The more intimate the workplace, the faster the negative interpersonal issues can spread. Workplace conflicts and decreased office morale can disrupt productivity, alienate workers and have a catastrophic effect on your employee retention efforts,” according to the Accountemps post.

“They can cost a company a reputation. A toxic worker cannot only cause harm, he or she can drag down others and hurt company productivity,” says Rich Deosingh, senior regional vice president of Accountemps in New York.

Steve Carrell’s character in The Office, Michael Scott, was known for scapegoating colleagues to distract from his own poor work ethic.

SPOTTING TROUBLEMAKERS

Mr Deosingh says one way a company can spot a problem employee is to do yearly reviews of workers and have periodic career conversations with each employee to get a pulse on the workplace.

The Harvard study contends that never hiring a toxic worker or getting rid of one is more important to a company’s bottom line than hiring a “superstar” worker.

The study compared the value of finding superstars, who are workers in the top 1 per cent of productivity, versus the value of avoiding a toxic worker.

“Succeeding in the latter,” the study said, “generates returns of nearly two-to-one, compared to those generated when firms hire a superstar. This suggests more broadly that ‘bad’ workers may have a stronger effect on the firm than ‘good’ workers.”

In investigating the effects of the toxic worker, the Harvard study reviewed more than 50,000 workers across 11 firms.

So why don’t firms just fire these workers, or not hire them in the first place?

The problem, the study says, is that some toxic workers — although corrupt and unpleasant — can be very productive. They can seem to be superstars, boosting the company’s bottom line.

But the study warns that toxic workers, even if they sometimes appear to be superstars, aren’t worth it. Why? Their liabilities immediately hurt the firm.

“Specifically, when a toxic worker arrives, people start leaving the company because they don’t want to be around this toxic person,” said Michael Housman, a co-author of the Harvard study.

“The cost turnover, which includes finding and training a new worker, is well tracked by the 11 companies we studied. These figures allowed us to estimate the annual cost of a toxic worker, just through increased turnover, as more than $16,980 ($US12,000) a year.”

Here are the different types of toxic people in your workplace:

• Gossipmongers: They spread fear by spouting hearsay.

• Big Bullies: These employees repeatedly put others down by verbally humiliating them.

• Saboteurs Extraordinaires: These are people trying to gain an advantage by hurting fellow workers.

• Spotlight Stealers: They take credit for others’ work and hoard the limelight in team projects.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as Toxic workers could be costing your workplace millions of dollars