Superstar hires don't make up for toxic employees.
This is the conclusion of a Harvard Business School report. The researchers looked at over 50,000 workers at 11 different firms to evaluate the benefits of highly productive employees versus the cost of toxic ones.
What makes an employee "toxic"? The HBR study defines toxic employees as workers "that engage in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people." You can probably come up with one or two (hopefully not more than that) from your career without thinking too hard. We know who they are because of how they effect us, our coworkers, and our customers.
Hopefully you can also identify a few high performers. For the purposes of the study, HBR defined "superstars" as the top 1% most productive workers.
The study found the average cost of employing a "toxic employee" was approximately $12,489, while the average benefit of employing a "superstar" was approximately $5,303. This means you have to hire more than 2 superstars to overcome the cost of just one toxic worker. Not so confident in your ability to hire top 1% superstars? It takes 6 top 25% performers to make up for the cost of one toxic worker.
The takeaway?
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