Applicants tend to put their best foot forward until they get hired—but sometimes, that’s where it ends. While some are coachable, certain bad employee traits require more quick and stern actions, especially if these start hampering your team and business.
Things like unreliability and poor time management may take a while to notice—but other traits like rudeness and an inability to improve may not be things you should wait to change. By keeping tabs on “bad employees,” providing coaching, and providing disciplinary action when warranted, you can prevent this from impacting your workforce.
Here are a few bad employee traits to take note of, how to address them, and when to start managing that employee out.
1. Unreliability
This covers everything from being late to meetings and missing deadlines to co-workers or managers having to recheck the bad employee’s work. Alternatively, the employee may have brilliant work and attitude one day and be horrible the next, so you never know what to expect.
2. Rudeness and Insubordination
This characteristic of a bad employee can not only frustrate management but also hurt your company’s reputation if the employee works with customers. This bad employee talks back to management, argues with customers, is passive-aggressive—constantly making snide remarks—or finds ways to not follow instructions.
3. Laziness/Lack of Initiative
Bad employees are often only concerned with doing the minimum to “earn” their paycheck. They refuse to take on extra tasks, even those within the scope of their job description. They aren’t interested in growth opportunities and are lackadaisical about training. They produce poor or “just barely good enough” work because they aren’t putting in the effort and are content to achieve minimum standards.
4. Refuses to Take Accountability
Nothing is this bad employee’s fault. Either someone else dropped the ball, the instructions were confusing, or some personal issue got in the way of their doing well at work. Occasionally, these are valid reasons, but beware when you see a pattern.
5. Bad/Negative Attitude
Sometimes, a brilliant worker is not worth it if their attitude disrupts the workplace. Signs of bad employee attitude might be arrogance, constant criticism of management, disdain for teammates or customers, or lack of respect for the company’s procedures, mission, or values.
6. Causes Drama and Stirs the Pot
Some people enjoy the adrenaline rush of conflict. These bad employees might spread rumors, overreact to problems, exaggerate disagreements, and complain. The passive-aggressive employee might publicly criticize someone under the guise of “being helpful.” Alternatively, they may demand attention or privileges because they can’t deal with the ordinary stress of the work.
Consideration for disabilities: In some cases, such as mental illness or other chronic conditions, an employee may need special consideration. Learn more in our articles:
- Hiring People With Disabilities
- Managing Employees With ADHD
- Light Work Policies
- What Is an Employee Assistance Program
7. Unengaged
The opposite of drama, an unengaged employee does not care about their work or what’s going on in the office. They don’t participate in meetings or interact with co-workers or customers even when the job demands it.
8. Bad Time Management
These people use work time to do personal tasks, text friends, scroll social media or watch YouTube videos, or switch-task so much they never get their work done. This bad employee trait is even worse when their time wasting affects others—like engaging co-workers in long conversations, preventing others’ work from being done too.
9. Indecisive/Overly Dependent
It’s one thing to clear something with your manager, but this becomes a characteristic of a bad employee when they cannot make a decision without consulting a manager, particularly on topics where they have authority. This employee might also stall on projects until they have a complete consensus of peers. They may delay projects with changes or redos.
10. Inability to Change
Sometimes, a great candidate simply cannot adapt to the pace or demands of the workplace, despite their qualifications. You’ll see this in their stress level at work, missed tasks, and errors. This is a particularly bad quality for an employee when it also includes the inability to accept and make changes based on feedback.
11. Lack of Technical Skills
This is especially jarring if they were hired based on professed expertise because it shows dishonesty. However, if their attitude is good, they might overcome this problem with training.
12. Poor Communication
Some people simply never learned how to write concisely or speak eloquently, but there are online classes to teach these skills and tools like Grammarly that can help. This is also a good topic for mentoring.
Warning Signs of a Bad Employee
Sometimes, the bad qualities of an employee are subtle enough that you may doubt yourself. Look for these warning signs (our article on 15 fireable offenses might help too).
- Customer complaints: If your employee is being called out negatively on public reviews or customer satisfaction surveys, or if you are having to apologize for their behavior, you may have a bad employee.
- Returned items: If customers are returning items created by your employee, it could indicate poor training—or a bad employee attitude or inability or unwillingness to learn the correct procedures.
- Violating company policies: This isn’t about skill. It shows disdain for you as an employer. Even worse, it can affect your company’s brand and reputation.
- Unproductive compared to their peers: If they aren’t completing tasks on time and with the same quality as their co-workers or are constantly depending on others to do their work, then they are dragging your company down.
- Co-workers have to redo their work. When their work is continually subpar, someone will end up picking up the slack, and this can happen either voluntarily or because someone was instructed to do so. If this continues, it will harm morale and, ultimately, your bottom line.
- No one in the office likes them: I don’t mean an occasional butting of heads or personality conflict. Rather, their teammates don’t trust them with assignments or avoid them because they bully, sow drama, overshare to the point of discomfort, or are inappropriate in other ways. Most people don’t want to complain about a co-worker, so you may need to watch for behavior and body language.
- Dishonesty: Nothing breaks morale like dishonesty. Outright lies count but also dishonesty has subtler forms, like blaming others for mistakes they made, taking credit for someone else’s work, or even withholding vital information.
- Public criticism of the company: If they are willing to air their grievances on social media, is it fair that they work for you?
- Frequent absences: Taking excessive time off, both in days off or long breaks, and being consistently late are red flags. Besides these, also consider “absent at the desk behaviors,” like doing personal errands on the job, running a game or show in the background, and excessive socializing.
- Refusal to change: Everyone deserves a second chance, but if you’ve counseled a bad employee and offered solutions but they don’t improve, it’s a sign for them to move on.
Bad Employee Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A bad employee is someone whose attitude and/or behavior disrupts the workplace. They usually have a combination of a negative, lazy, or entitled attitude, poor skills, and indifference to the quality of work they put out.
Sure. Some bad employees are very charismatic and social, making them fun to be around. However, their problem areas lie in the completion and quality of work and possibly in how they keep others from completing their projects as well.
This depends on who you ask. Some authorities classify them by personality types (like the Grump) or archetypes (like The Gatekeeper). However, I like eSkill’s classifications.
- The Bad Communicator: This person can’t or won’t communicate clearly. They may ramble or withhold information—both are bad. They might also have bad timing, waiting until the last minute, or responding too quickly and sending correction after correction.
- The Contract Negotiator: This person strives to avoid work by saying it’s technically not in their job description. They might also be prone to do just the minimum required.
- The Non-Professional: These workers are unreliable, prone to break unspoken rules (as well as any professed ones they think are “stupid”), and disdain company etiquette.
- The Non-Joiner: This means more than being reluctant to take part in team projects. Non-joiners express negative attitudes and sow dissent, sometimes just to see the drama unfold. They may think of themselves as mavericks who know better than their peers or management.
A troubled employee may display some of the same behaviors as a bad employee. However, in this case, it’s a change in their behavior rather than their standard way of acting. In addition, they may show signs of depression or preoccupation. You may see physical signs as well, such as an untidy appearance, weariness, slurred speech, or confusion.
There are certain tell-tale signs that you may notice in an individual, even while they are still in the applicant stage. Things like not understanding what the job requires, insufficient skills or knowledge, arrogance in the interview (as opposed to healthy confidence), and unwillingness to compromise are immediate red flags. If they’re already onboarded, take a look at their training performance, on-the-job productivity, as well as how they relate with their peers. If they’re underperforming or are rude when they speak, then you have a bad employee on your hands.
Sometimes, bad employees make great candidates, and it’s not until after their probationary period is over that they start showing problematic behavior. It’s important to provide clear and frequent feedback and track problem issues. Best case scenario: You can fix the bad traits of an employee with attention and training; worst case: You’ll have grounds to fire them.
It’s difficult to say; most estimates play off a 2003 US Department of Labor study that estimated bad hires cost 30% of the individual’s first-year earnings. However, as a good rule of thumb, consider the cost spent hiring and training your terrible employee, plus the amount you’ll spend hiring and training a new employee, and any manhours lost from the employee’s bad behavior or subpar work.
Bottom Line
Every company has to contend with a bad employee at one time or another. Left unchecked, they can damage your company. When you learn how to recognize the qualities of a bad employee, you can get ahead of the problem, either by working with them to improve or removing them from your business before they hurt employee morale, productivity, or your company’s reputation.
