I have a toxic employee. What should I do?

"Do you think I need to fire her?"

The vice president asked the question with the tone of someone who knew the answer, but was reluctant to hear it. She felt she had a toxic employee who undermined the rest of the team. Yet firing her felt like a failure in an organizational culture built on kindness and empathy.

She needed validation that letting the employee go was the best decision.

Here's the advice I shared with the vice president. It can help you, too, if you feel you have a toxic employee on your team.

Is the employee really toxic?

Start by determining if the employee is really toxic. A lot of employee problems fall into other categories.

• Some employees are poor performers who need coaching.
• Others want to do a great job, but don't have the tools or resources.
• A few are just people you don't like.

A toxic employee is someone who engages is harmful or malicious behavior. Examples include harassment, theft, dishonesty, and intentionally poor customer service.

For that last one, think really bad, like changing a customer's name to "Asshole" on their account. (Yeah, that happened .)

Being likable or dislikable isn't a good test. One toxic employee I worked with was well-liked. She even won an employee of the month award, right before she was caught stealing .

So before you label an employee as "toxic," ask yourself what you have observed that makes you feel that way. Can you point to something egregious?

The vice president felt her employee exuded toxic stress. She lashed out at other people, blamed coworkers for her mistakes, and created an environment where people didn't want to work with her.

What is the impact of a toxic employee?

The next step is assessing the problem caused by the toxic employee.

In their 2015 study on toxic customer service employees, Michael Housman and Dylan Minor found that 1 in 20 customer service employees were fired within their first year on the job for toxic behavior such as harassment, theft, or other egregious violations of company policy.

Toxic employees tend to infect others. Housman and Minor found that adding just one more toxic employee to a team of 25 people made everyone on the team 46 percent more likely to be fired themselves.

I conducted a separate study in 2019 that discovered 83 percent of customer service professionals work with at least one toxic coworker. That's compared to just 22 percent for employees in all professions.

These employees create many issues:

• Poor customer service
• Increased human resources complaints
• Lowered productivity

The vice president saw the impact the toxic employee had on morale. There had been complaints. Some good employees were in danger of leaving. Work quality suffered as people tried to avoid working with her.

What should you do about a toxic employee?

First, a short disclaimer. This post is not legal advice. Please consult your human resources representative or employment attorney before firing anyone.

My non-lawyer advice? Toxic employees should be fired.

I'm not normally a quick to fire person. I believe in giving most employees lots of training, lots of coaching, and lots of chances.

But toxic employees are the exception. Their impact on coworkers and customers is so profoundly negative that removing them is the best choice .

The vice president knew this answer when she asked for my advice. That doesn't make it any easier. Firing someone shouldn't be fun.

Conclusion

A strong, customer-focused culture is comprised of dedicated employees who are all working in the same direction. That's hard to achieve with a toxic employee undermining everyone else's effort.

Customer Obsessed shares practical advice for building a customer-focused culture. It draws upon lessons from The Service Culture Handbook .