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These types are critical to locate and eradicate from your culture to promote a better work environment that can create an excellent Customer Experience<\/a>.<\/p>\nWhat makes a toxic employee?<\/strong><\/p>\n Toxic employees are people that may or may not work hard, but create an environment of antagonism in their wake. They are not on board with management\u2019s vision for the future. They don\u2019t engage with the vision or feel any ownership in its deployment. They often disguise their toxicity as \u201cconstructive criticism\u201d or calling themselves \u201crealists.\u201d According to\u00a0Entrepreneur.com<\/a>, toxic employees can cause the following symptoms in your organization:<\/p>\n Inc.com<\/a>\u00a0published an article last month about secretly toxic employees. They included the following four types of employees:<\/p>\n Toxic Employees Are Contagious<\/strong><\/p>\n You know the old saying that, \u201cMisery loves company?\u201d Well, Toxic employees tend to be miserable, so they are going to make sure they have company. When they do this, it\u2019s like they are infecting others with their condition. These other employees might have been happy at one time, but now have joined the dark side.<\/p>\n Some experts on workplace culture refer to toxic employees like weeds in a flower bed or a virus. Others say they taint the others around them, much like a clean shirt will smell if you throw it in the dirty laundry. Most people agree, however that the importance of eliminating toxic employees is paramount to your Employee Experience.<\/p>\n Now obviously this is easy to do when the toxic employee is brazen about it. It is more complicated, however, when an employee is more secretly toxic. The truth is that of these secretly toxic employees might not even know that they are. In fact, you could be one yourself.<\/p>\n The Antidote for Toxicity<\/strong><\/p>\n Clearly, the best thing to do when you have a secretly toxic employee is to fire them. This strategy is problematic, however, if you don\u2019t know the source. It\u2019s also a problem if you have such a culture problem that toxicity continues to manifest, no matter how many times you try to remove it from your organization.<\/p>\n The antidote for toxicity is threefold.<\/strong><\/p>\n Toxic employees, whether they are secretly so or not, are bound to bring down your company culture. They will spread like a virus or a weed, destroying the culture of your organization and poisoning the Customer Experience. Be sure to invest in creating the antidote to these toxic employees by defining the culture you want, recruiting the right talent to promote it and to reward the ambassadors of your vision. Employing this threefold strategy will create a culture at your organization that you want and not the one that secretly toxic employees would give you.<\/p>\n Have you worked with toxic employees? I would love to hear how you manage them in the comments below.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:<\/p>\n Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of\u00a0Beyond Philosophy<\/a>, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of\u00a0four best-selling books<\/a>\u00a0and an engaging\u00a0keynote speaker<\/a>. To read more from Colin on LinkedIn, connect with him by clicking the follow button above or below. If you would like to follow Beyond Philosophy click\u00a0here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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