HR SPECIAL....... Havoc in the Workplace

Havoc in the Workplace 
 

How to cope with hurricane employees

They have been called toxic, negative, dysfunctional, narcissistic, territorial, sociopathic, de-motivating, vampire-like. The words describe employees - from CEOs on down to mid-level managers and their subordinates - who tear through an office, disrupting everyone's work environment and leaving a path of destruction in their wake before moving on, like a hurricane.
    Hurricane employees are nothing new. While most people have encountered some version of them during their working lives, HR practitioners and experts alike suggest that today's business climate is more susceptible to their influence. Studies show that recruiters spend an average of five to seven seconds looking at resumes - focusing mainly on previous experience and salary requirements - while job seekers have learned to game the online application system by using words they know will trigger interest in their resumes. Candid reference checks beyond a person's name and employment confirmation are rare. In short, it is harder than ever to predict whether the new hire on the block will meet the company's needs or sabotage the company's culture.
    Organizations experience hurricane employees in many different ways, but in general they are employees who "destroy the social fabric of the organization by creating friction, drama, tension and hostility among other employees," says Michelle Duffy of Carlson School of Management.
    Tim Withers, president and co-founder of Boston-based Parallel Consult, a management consulting firm that focuses on family-owned and private businesses, describes a hurricane employee as "the antithesis of a team-oriented player…. It takes time, energy and momentum to build a team. It doesn't happen overnight. A hurricane employee can [undo] a year of teambuilding within a couple of weeks."
    While some hurricane employees bring varying degrees of difficult personalities into an organization, they can also be people who create havoc because they simply don't fit into the culture. "When someone who has typically been a high performer as an individual contributor is put into a role that requires working through others, not surprisingly, it doesn't end well," says Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources.
    "An employee who comes from a hard-driving culture of frank feedback, setting tough goals and badgering people to meet them - a culture where conflict is how things get done will come across as very toxic in an environment where consensus and conflict avoidance are high," adds Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell. A company might say it wants people who are candid and straightforward, "but actually it doesn't. It wants a friendly collegial atmosphere. So it's important for a company or team to be honest with themselves about their culture."
    Hurricane behavior, whatever its origin, tends to be found in large organizations that experience high turnover. "Companies are trying to plug holes so fast that it is challenging to build teams and teamwork -- yhey don't get to know people on a personal level," says Withers. "If the organization has a good culture, it will be clear that the primary goal is to create a good team and build efficiencies across groups. Another company, however, looks at the quarterly numbers and sees that this person is producing twice as much as the person next to him." Consequently, it is slow to act on the dysfunction that the employee is causing. And once leaders are slow to act, they are crushing the internal culture even more because they are showing that they are willing to put up with the hurricane employee despite the disruptions he brings.
    Sandra Robinson of Sauder School of Business suggests that hurricane employees "are more likely to show up when hiring managers pay too much attention to task competencies, formal credentials or experience over seriously weighing and considering the individual's character or potential fit with the culture…. The former is easier to evaluate and more likely to dominate the decision process." Robinson has seen two cases where the job candidate raised red flags during the interviews: One involved a top executive "who went out of his way to tell anyone who would listen that he had very high emotional intelligence. Another elaborated upon how he manipulated his way into a corner office in his last position."
    How does an organization steer clear of hiring, or promoting, hurricane employees? These mistakes "could be avoided with a little more care," says Cappelli. "They often occur when senior managers buy into the vision of change that the employee presents - the goals - and don't think through how likely it is to be achieved." If prospective top-level hires "don't explain how they are going to go about changing the operation, if they don't talk about the role their subordinates will play, if they are only talking about themselves" - those are all tip-offs that this person might be a problem.
    Klein, who led teams at AT&T for 10 years before coming to Wharton, says managers can test job candidates' fit in the organization in several ways. One is to set up a virtual inbox in which the job candidate is asked to review six pieces of information and decide how to respond to and prioritize them. Another approach is for candidates to participate in a half-day simulation where they work in teams on a project, such as building small cars out of paper. "The task doesn't matter," Klein says. "What we are looking at is the way these people interact over a longer period of time. Usually the results corroborate what we have already seen, but occasionally there are people who are revealed as potential hurricane employees."
    Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton © 2013 CDET131129