Bad employees produce negative results

Bad employees produce a negative working environment that could affect the entire workforce.

The cost of employing a wrong person could be high though there is no perfect science to measure the exact impact. But with experience you get to know the serious negative consequences of employing the wrong people.

The best you can do as a manager is to ensure that you only employ good people. Many managers are uncomfortable in addressing the issue of a 'bad employee'.

Not every employee will be excellent at every job. The first challenge is separating your employees into groups such as: star players, good employees and bad employees. If your company has more than 10 people, there is a really good chance that you have at least one bad employee.

The best way to avoid bad employees is 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 lack of training, a poorly defined role, lack of feedback, shifting organisational priorities or something deeper - these are organisational factors which leaders are accountable for.

In terms of personal factors, there are many reasons why employees behave in an unacceptable manner in the workplace.

Sometimes they're 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 need a different approach.

Bad employees

It is important to understand that keeping a bad employee on the staff not only hurts your company, but hurts that person as well. The majority of bad 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 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 replaced your bad 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: frees time to become a better leader, shows the rest of the team that good performance was recognised, replacing bad employees increases team's throughput by a few folds.

Negative traits

When a cancer enters the body, it grows and spreads if undetected and untreated. A bad 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 bad employee notice the issues and typically try to fight off catching the negative traits.

However, such traits are contagious and can severely hurt or even kill a company. A bad employee will eventually spoil your employees, business partners, customers and product or service quality - the potential damage is huge.

'Badness'

If you have tolerated a bad employee, and the 'cancer' has spread in your company, there is only one way to correct the problem - get rid of your bad employee. After his dismissal, you must address the remaining staff. Not being candid about the justification for firing can cause a fast wave of gossip to spread throughout your company. Make sure that you do not bash the bad 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.