One Bad Employee Can Spread Like a Virus Even in a Healthy Culture

The following article is an excerpt from John DiJulius' new book, The Employee Experience Revolution: Increase Morale, Retain Your Workforce, and Drive Business Growth

The age-old proverb “One bad apple spoils the barrel” is a perfect metaphor for workplace culture. We found the results of the following experiment to be an aha leadership moment.

Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, conducted a fascinating study demonstrating contagious behavior in the work environment. He split his college students into four groups and instructed each team to complete a management objective. Teams performing the best would receive a hundred dollars each. The students didn’t know that the professor included an actor on some of the teams.

These actors played one of three roles: a “slacker” who would disengage, put his feet up on the table, and send text messages; a “jerk” who would speak sarcastically and say things like, “Are you kidding me?” and “Clearly, you’ve never taken a business class before” or a “depressive pessimist,” who would look like his cat had just died, complain that the task was impossible, express doubt that the team could succeed, and sometimes put his head down on the desk.

Study findings

Felps’s first finding was that even when other team members were exceptionally talented and intelligent, one team member’s negative attitude brought down the effectiveness of the entire team. In dozens of trials conducted over monthlong periods, groups with one underperformer did worse than other teams by an alarming rate of 30 to 40 percent.

To make matters worse, the other members started mirroring the poor team members even in the short time frame of one class period. Felps explains, “Eerily surprising was how the others on the team would start to take on his characteristics.” When the impostor was a slacker, the rest of the group lost interest in the project. Eventually, someone else would announce that the task wasn’t important. If the actor was a jerk, others in the group also started being jerks by insulting one another and speaking abrasively. When the actor was a depressed pessimist, the results were the starkest.

Says Felps: “I remember watching this video of one of the groups. You start out all the members are sitting up straight, energized, and excited to take on this potentially challenging task. By the end they have their heads on the desk, sprawled out.”

A-Players only need apply 

You get what you pay for; hiring great people is an investment. Every employee is like a stock in your investment portfolio. The rock star rule is that fewer employees are paid more, which equates to a lower total labor cost. It has been said that one high performer delivers more than ten average employees in a creative environment. Not to mention, average employees bring down high performers. Performance is contagious.

Building a world-class culture is about finding high performers and removing poor ones. A great workplace for high performers is one in which they’re surrounded by other high performers.

The objective of a company’s hiring process 

1. Scare away the bad candidates.
2. Find out who the potential rockstars are.
3. Make the potential rock stars want to work for your company.

Don’t offer a job, offer a career

From each employee candidate’s first encounter with your brand to their first day of new employee orientation and throughout their career with your organization, make sure they are aware of the career opportunities that can result from their hard work and rock-star performance in helping the company grow.

Share examples of your rags-to-riches stories of people who started off at entry-level positions, many of whom probably thought they were in a temporary transitional job. However, because of the culture, they stayed and rose through the ranks, and their efforts and loyalty were rewarded. Today, they are some of the top leaders in your company, and they have had the biggest impact not only on the organization’s success but also on team members’ lives.

Share your vision and tie it to your employees’ jobs

Leaders must constantly remember that human beings need meaning and purpose in their jobs. It shouldn’t be a shock that so many employees don’t stay in jobs that aren’t engaging or inspiring them. Most people want more than competitive wages and health insurance; they want to be part of something bigger.

Whether you are a recruiter or leader, during an employee’s career, especially during the interview stage, you must help them see your vision of what their short-term and long-term future could look like with your company. When done right, your vision becomes their vision. That is a powerful transformation, a game changer for an employee to have someone who believes in them and what they are capable of.

John R. DiJulius III, author of The Customer Service Revolution, is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies including Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Contact him at 216-839-1430 or info@thedijuliusgroup.com.