Business Training & Coaching
The people problem
How to identify and eliminate profit-killing employees in your organization
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Pittsburgh | March 2009
Samuel J. Lucci III
Founder, CEO
Partners Through People
You may have tolerated dissension in
the past, but in the current economic
climate, keeping employees who don’t
share your agenda is dangerous, if not impossible, says Samuel J. Lucci III, the founder
and CEO of Partners Through People.
“These types of people are always a problem, but in a recession, their negative effect is
devastating,” adds Lucci.
When times are tough, executives need the
cooperation of the entire company for their
decisions to succeed. If your employees
aren’t on board with those decisions, your
message is sabotaged.
“If you don’t address this problem quickly, it
will eat away at the foundation of your business,” says Lucci. “You have to be careful,
because recessions have a way of weakening
companies, and you could end up in a position where you never fully recover. If you lose
market share, you may never get it back.”
Smart Business spoke with Lucci to find
out how to identify and eliminate the profit-killing employees in your company and how
to avoid hiring others.
How do you identify profit-killing employees?
You can identify profit-killing employees by
being observant. The best way to do this is
not to ask someone else. Don’t ask your managers, if you have mid-level managers. This is
one time when you want to know for sure.
And, don’t listen to what these employees are
saying — watch what they do. Get out of
your office and move about. You really have
to get down in the ranks.
This is not a time to rely on someone else’s
evaluation, unless you absolutely have to.
And if you do, you should observe the people
who are doing the observing, because in
times like these, people get negative. There
are all kinds of emotions banging around and
objectivity tends to go away. If I’m your
supervisor, and I don’t like you, that can jade
what I’m going to report. The top person
needs to be above that so they can see for
themselves what’s going on.
What do you look for when searching for profit-killing employees?
The general nature of these employees is
often what’s commonly referred to as passive-aggressive. They agree to anything. They
say ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no.’ They say
‘yes’ and then do what they want to do.
In a recession, you have to preserve your
cash. So you may go to your purchasing
agent and say, ‘I want you to cut inventory to
the lowest level you can; buy only what you
have to.’ And he or she will say, ‘I understand;
I’ll do that.’ But then he or she does business
as usual. Then, three months later, you’ve got
to pay for purchases you didn’t need with
cash you don’t have.
Another example is underperforming sales-people. Underperforming salespeople hurt
your business at any time, but in a recession
it multiplies because cash is king. That just
accentuates the problem. It’s hard to make a
sale in these times and underperforming
salespeople probably won’t make any.
These passive-aggressive salespeople start
making excuses instead of keeping themselves positive and being persistent. They
give up. And if two-thirds of your sales staff
has given up, that can put you in big trouble.
How can you avoid attracting these problem
employees?
It’s been my experience that employees
give their best performance in the interview, especially salespeople. They know how to
conduct themselves in an interview, but that’s
not who shows up for work.
You could liken it to courtship in a marriage. When you meet someone of the opposite sex and you want to impress him or her,
you’re going to be on your best behavior.
Well, after a while they get a chance to see the
real you.
To stop attracting and hiring these profit-killing employees, you have to redesign and
reconfigure the way you hire. A national statistic says 67 percent of new hires in the U.S
are failures. It’s unreal but it’s true.
The only way to really stop that is to get
very serious about discerning the attitudes of
the people you’re going to bring into the
organization. You definitely need expert help
with that.
A business owner is not going to get proficient in that because they have to be proficient at running the business. My advice
would be: Don’t just do it by yourself. Get
some outside, professional help. Human
resource people are usually the ones who
understand all the logistics and legal and all
that, but they aren’t experts at uncovering
attitude.
What else can you do?
Try to interview each one of your employees individually and ask for their suggestions.
Now, if you have 2,500, it wouldn’t be possible. But if you have a company of 50 to 100,
it’s possible.
Begin the discussion, treat them with dignity, and see what they have to say. You will
begin to see who wants to cooperate and
who doesn’t. Then, when you find the ones
who want to cooperate, you ask for their
help. So you are actually enlisting more people to work with this problem.
Keeping negative problem employees
demoralizes the good employees. Sometimes
it gets so bad that the good people leave.
Good people can always find a job somewhere, but that leaves your company with
the worst of the worst.
SAMUEL J. LUCCI III is the founder and CEO of Partners Through People. Reach him at sjl3@partnersthroughpeople.com or
(724) 457-2500.
