Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
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Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#2>A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.”
If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#3The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#4The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
> Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
What?
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#5>A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.
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Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#6The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
It does the exact opposite of that. The argument is that the focus on finding “rock stars” who act as a positive force is less efficient than a focus on avoiding “toxic” employees who act as a negative force.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#7The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
The article compares the return on the cost/investment of hiring a rock star vs NOT hiring a toxic. It acts as guidance on what part of one's hiring pipeline is most worth investment.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#8https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d...
It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation.
It seems to be using a tautological definition:
defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net loss. By definition.
They also state they don't consider "productivity spillover" because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it.
The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for 'proving' that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that.
If one wanted to truly study these costs, they'd also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#9>A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.
the study finds that
> avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#10This reminds me of a story about hen breeding:
Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs.
Indeed, for some strange reason, the individual breeding programs which had been so successful at increasing egg production now required hens to have their beaks clipped, or be housed in individual cages, or they would peck each other to death.
While the conditions for group selection are only rarely right in Nature, one can readily impose genuine group selection in the laboratory. After only 6 generations of artificially imposed group selection - breeding from the hens in the best groups, rather than the best individual hens - average days of survival increased from 160 to 348, and egg mass per bird increased from 5.3 to 13.3 kg. At 58 weeks of age, the selected line had 20% mortality compared to the control group at 54%. A commercial line of hens, allowed to grow up with unclipped beaks, had 89% mortality at 58 weeks.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-...