Dealing with Toxic Employees

Have you ever had a really bad employee in your company or on your team? An employee who doesn’t carry their weight, distracts coworkers, or has a poor attitude? But how many employees are really "bad apples"?

There may be a small percentage of employees who really don't belong or shouldn't be working at your company. If that’s true, then you should have fired them yesterday. But most employees get to "bad apple" status because their bosses don’t take corrective actions.

The sooner a supervisor addresses a troublesome employee, the less trouble that employee will be. It’s the job of the supervisor to create a work environment that is conducive to everyone being productive and working together. The boss is responsible for addressing employee issues before they become major problems. And if an issue does become a problem, it’s the job of the boss to figure out how to fix it.

When I had a troublesome employee I would assign him/her a ‘buddy’ that acted as a mentor. That one thing made a huge difference in my workplace. I made it clear that if they were having any problems, I wanted to hear about it. The trick was making a good match between the employee who was struggling and the employee that was trying to help.

- barney