One bad apple…

I’ve written a lot of posts about how to keep your employees motivated, engaged, and how to keep your top performers. This week I’d like to share my thoughts on what happens when you keep an employee you really should let go. One bad apple can spoil the barrel…it’s an old saying, but it still holds true.

A bad apple can disrupt morale and have a lasting negative impact on company culture. In addition, they will eventually damage your reputation as a leader. Keeping an employee who is not measuring up threatens your credibility and authority. As a leader, your job is to remove roadblocks and enable your employees’ ability to work. I’ve seen managers move the bad apple into a role that is more isolated, thinking they won’t hurt anyone in this role, but ultimately, they are hurting their own credibility with the rest of the company. It’s difficult enough to remove a non-perform, but what happens when you have a high-performer that is toxic. Sometime you have to remove an employee just on the basis of their interactions with other employees. The classic example is the sales person who meets their quotas but makes everyone around them miserable with their dreadful behavior.

One of the things a company or team looks for in a leader is stability around how the team is going to function. If a leader is not holding everyone to an acceptable standard and treating people fairly, trust and loyalty will erode over time.

The cost of the bad apple is not only measured in emotional impact and performance; they can cost your company money too. As a leader you may not initially see the total damage, as the cost isn’t obvious. However, the damage to the team has multiple cost impacts - lost work hours, people avoiding the bad apple (company social functions may have lower attendance as people try to avoid interacting with the bad apple), talking about the bad apple (this consumes time and emotional energy that could be put towards productivity), being worried about dealing with the bad apple (this is acerbated if the person is in a managerial role), and witnessing others harmed by the bad apple.

It’s tough to let an employee go, even when the signs are obvious. I know I have personally struggled with this over the course of my career. It’s easy to hold on to employees too long, for whatever reason (the person is family, a friend, or you just dread the process), but in this very competitive world you can't afford to have employees who aren't cutting it.