8 Types Of Toxic Employees That Are Poisoning Your Office

What are the worst types of toxic employees? In our opinion, any employee who makes a continuous negative impact on your workplace is a terrible and toxic employee. These individuals are an absolute nightmare for your business and your team.

Toxic employees cause problems in the office all of the time. They give excuses, lie, bad mouth people, miss deadlines, or treat others poorly. They may become troublemakers because of issues like lack of skills, boredom, fear of failure, burnout, arrogance, personal issues, lack of confidence, stress, or any number of other factors. Whatever the reason, they negatively affect productivity, motivation, performance and morale.

When Is The Right Time To Fire A Toxic Employee?

Toxic employees are no laughing matter. Ideally they are never hired, but occasionally toxic employees slip through the hiring cracks. Once they are in your office, their negative attitudes and poor performance can have a spill over affect that is contagious to your team. If you want your company to be successful, these behaviors will need to be dealt with sooner than later.

Infographics from GetVoip.com and Recruiter.com inspired us to create the following list of types of toxic employees. Do you recognize any of these toxic employee profiles from your office?

1. The Slacker – This employee never pulls their own weight and never gets any work done.
2. The Bully – No one likes a bully who picks on other team members.
3. The Gossip – It’s easy to start rumors, but hard to stop them.
4. The “That’s Not My Job” – An employee who isn’t adaptable or a team player will cause problems.
5. The Mess – This employee is disorganized, constantly late, and inattentive to detail – and it directly affects his or her work.
6. The Emotional Train Wreck – When an employee continually shares their emotional baggage it can be draining on the rest of the team.
7. The Know It All – When an employee always believes they are right, you’ll never get anything done.
8. The Yeller – People who yell, typically never listen and they make others feel bad in the process.

Anyone who has experience in the working world will have seen at least one of these troublemakers in action. It’s a terrible situation really. They are a totally drain on the business and the team. These types of toxic employees contribute nothing positive to the workplace, but they also have the potential and ability to completely ruin your business. It’s a scary situation that you need to address immediately.

The Best Day Of The Week To Fire Someone

As a manager it’s your job to identify these types of toxic employees and how they impact your office. Next, you need to make a plan of action to improve the situation. That might consist of trying to rehabilitate them or fire them. That’s your call and it will be situationally dependent.

We all know how expensive it is to replace an employee. Add in a toxic employee’s destructive nature and negative impact and you have a situation that needs to be avoided at all costs. If you want to keep these types of toxic employees out of your workplace, you’ll need to start during the hiring process.

As the hiring manager, you need to step up your game. Make sure that you ask the right questions in the interview, actively use social media to screen candidates, utilize background checks, make the most of reference checks, and consider hiring for personality over skill. To fine tune your hiring game, visit JobMonkey’s Employer Insights. We have lots of great advice that will benefit any hiring manager in any niche. Apply this hiring advice to your business and hopefully you can avoid hiring any toxic employees in the future.