5 Truths of a Toxic Employee

5 Truths of a Toxic Employee

According to the harvardbusinessreview.com, 1 in 20 workers was ultimately terminated for toxic behavior. A toxic employee can be a challenge to identify, but these four habits should help recognize which workers are creating a toxic work environment.
  • An employee who takes meetings off track

This person is the one who may attack or argue during a meeting to take the meeting off track. The employee tries to get others involved in their off topic argument during the meeting which will promote others to participate in a hostile work environment.

  • They are overconfident

Some of these workers that create a toxic environment can be overconfident. Overconfidence on a subject can cause workers to overestimate their specialties which then cause problems for supervisors. An example would be someone who is overconfident may show up late or cut corners in their work. An employee who is overconfident can feel that they are less likely to be caught.

  • They complain, and they are clearly unhappy

If you are constantly trying to make one of your employees happy, and they still are not, they may be creating the toxic work environment. These workers may consistently complain about other employees or their work environment. An employee who creates a toxic work environment may also tend to yell or lose their temper with other employees or clients.

  • The toxic employee pushes work off to everyone else

Delegating is usually a good practice in a workplace, although this type of delegating is mainly passing all of the toxic employee’s work on to other workers. That way the employee does not have to do any work themselves.

  • The employee doesn’t take responsibility for their actions or mistakes

Since workers who create a toxic environment may push off work on everyone else, they also may not assume responsibility for errors. They can then say they had someone else complete the action and then not receive any repercussions for mistakes in the work.

In a study that Harvard.edu posted, “a top 1 percent worker might return $5,303 in cost savings to a company through increased output, avoiding a toxic hire will net an estimated $12,489, the study said.” Not to mention litigation fees, court fees, and decreased productivity costing the company. Having a toxic employee leave a company due to creating a negative environment can not only save the company money, but increase workplace morale and productivity.

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