Keeping a Toxic Employee

By Beth Wiand, Director of Sales & Marketing, Wiand Dental Laboratory, Scottsdale, AZ

The one major mistake we made was holding onto a toxic employee for far too long: 10 years. We originally hired him as a manager but, since he didn’t have the people skills to be successful in that position, he became our Technical Lead. Unfortunately, he also became a cancer to the rest of the team. He complained, focused on the negative, created issues, placed doubt in the minds of many team members about us and the company, made more work for everyone, and emotionally drained us and the team at large. 

We held on to him because technicians are hard to come by and he was talented. But after eight long years, we hired an HR manager, Betsy Finder, who stepped in and started managing the situation more proactively; this ultimately resulted...