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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday December 03 2015, @06:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the people-who-should-be-fired dept.

They bad-mouth you to work colleagues behind your back; they angrily demand the impossible from everyone but themselves; they make unwanted comments about your attire.

At some point in our careers, most of us have come across someone known as a "toxic worker," a colleague or boss whose abrasive style or devious actions can make the workday utterly miserable. Such people hurt morale, stoke conflict in the office, and harm a company's reputation.

But toxic workers aren't just annoying or unpleasant to be around; they cost firms significantly more money than most of them even realize. According to a new Harvard Business School (HBS) paper, toxic workers are so damaging to the bottom line that avoiding them or rooting them out delivers twice the value to a company that hiring a superstar performer does.

While a top 1 percent worker might return $5,303 in cost savings to a company through increased output, avoiding a toxic hire will net an estimated $12,489, the study said. That figure does not include savings from sidestepping litigation, regulatory penalties, or decreased productivity as a result of low morale.

On the other hand, toxic co-workers are useful as foils come bonus time: "Hey, at least I'm not as bad as that guy..."


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:18PM (#271508)

    A good resume should him all he needs to know about engineering ability. References exist to tell the rest of the story.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @08:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @08:47PM (#271554)

    When was the last time you included a reference that may give an unflattering side of you?