Matt Dolan

Every one of your employees, like any human being in any profession, has bad days at work. But it is the small number of chronically toxic individuals who generate the overwhelming majority of stress and frustration for co-workers and supervisors. An organization’s toxic employees can often be such a distraction from the organization's mission that supervisors seem to spend more time dealing with the internal issues generated by toxic employees than they spend focused on moving the organization forward.

If not confronted, toxic behavior can prove extremely deflating to the morale of co-workers in light of their leaders’ apparent inability to hold them accountable for their actions. This is made all the more frustrating when toxic employees are widely known to be seriously problematic but are never adequately confronted by leaders in the organization.

Leaders need to confront this extremely damaging presence in the workforce in a way that both protects the integrity of the organization and is legally defensible. Ensuring that these management techniques are legally defensible is particularly important because, in many cases, toxic employees tend to be perpetual plaintiffs who file baseless grievances, complaints and lawsuits throughout their careers as they refuse to accept responsibility for their actions.