Avoiding the toxic employee

One expert has stressed the importance of leadership in driving performance and engagement, and how it is the role of leaders to identify and weed out toxic employees or candidates.

In a recent live stream, Peter Berry Consultancy director Peter Berry (pictured) said: “If you don’t have leadership operating at an optimum level, you’re going to see employee disengagement, which we’ll come to shortly, the level of competence or the level of toxic behaviour that can creep into a culture, unless you’re really vigilant.”

“Sometimes [toxic behaviour] is a bit hard to catch out. But in all instances, it’s up to leadership to establish engagement as a goal in business and to hold people accountable, to have values supported by behaviours.”

In the same live stream, Berry also discussed how HR departments can deal with free-rider employees while driving engagement.

Berry said that a team is the first to spot someone incompetent because they have to carry that incompetent person’s workload and fix their mistakes. However, often co-workers do not know what to do with a toxic colleague, and they do not want to dob them in.

“There’s a sense of camaraderie within the team, but they’re desperately hoping that the management will come in and fix it,” Berry said.

For Berry, toxic behaviour includes bullying, harassment, theft, disregarding safety regulations, deliberately damaging machines and facilities, as well as doing their own business in company time and bagging the organisation.

The cost of getting rid of a toxic employee can be enormous, Berry said. These costs include the legal fees that come with issuing three warnings, as well as the documentation and process it takes to terminate the person, he added.

This can leave employees vulnerable to challenges, legal appeals, issues, or counterclaims, and then the price tag it takes for the person to be replaced. Berry noted that it costs between $50,000 – $70,000 to replace an incompetent or toxic person, which goes straight to the company’s bottom line.

Berry stressed that the unreliability of interviews shows the importance of psychometric testing of candidates.

“For example, the interview is the least likely predictor of a good hire because the person presenting is obviously going to turn up ready to do a good show, and some chemistry happens,” Berry said.

“‘Yeah, I like that person, I think we’ll offer that person a job’, and three months later you get to see the incompetent or toxic behaviour.”

“So you’ve got a hire hard, manage easy to make sure you’ve got the right job fit, hire, hard, manage easy.”