When Is It So Hard To Get Rid Of Difficult Employees

I recently worked with a startup whose sales team was the pride of the company. They consistently put up great numbers, and for the most part, they worked like a well-oiled machine. However, there was one particular sales team member who seemed to get harder and harder to manage the better their numbers were.

Upper management was in a real tough situation. On one hand, the sales team member was productive, efficient, and profitable. On the other hand, they had other sales team members complaining on a regular basis that it was becoming more difficult to work with the employee. When management approached him about the issues, he felt like he could brush them off since his numbers were so good. Basically, he was feeling irreplaceable, so

Are you afraid that his or her benefits outweigh the issues and you’ll be left with an unfillable hole? If it wasn’t for dealing with personnel, being a manager would be a simple job. However, often dealing with employees is the toughest part of management, and getting rid of unmanageable yet talented workers can feel like a daunting task. Sometimes, though, you just need to rip off the bandaid, and you’ll realize the entire company is better off without difficult employees. It’s important to remember, however talented the worker may be, no one is completely

It’s important to make the hard decisions as soon as you can so you can move on from them, though. Sometimes, there are consequences that come with those choices, and that could be the reason you avoid getting rid of difficult employees. For example, you may not want to deal with the hiring process again. Or, maybe the termination laws in your area make it difficult to rightfully remove someone from their position. Maybe the employee is quite talented as just hard to manage. It can be a struggle to decide if it is worth it to let them go or to pour more time, energy, and resources into training and disciplining the employee.

As a startup, a sign of weakness could potentially be catastrophic when trying to find investors. You might fear that any internal issues could negatively impact your company’s culture, hiring process, or ability to maintain employees. Keep in mind that, while individual contributions might be stellar, a difficult employee can poison the whole company’s culture. You may start to face the risk of losing other employees just because you don’t want to make the difficult decision to get rid of the bad egg. In this case, the cons would outweigh the pros, and it would be time to remove the