Nobody likes working with slackers.
In a recent study by Leadership IQ, a Washington, D.C.-based training and research company, 87 percent of employees said that working beside low-performing colleagues has made them want to change jobs. And 93 percent said that working with low performers has decreased their productivity.
“Low performers can feel like emotional vampires, sucking the energy out of everyone around them,” said Leadership IQ chief executive Mark Murphy, whose company surveyed 70,305 employees, managers and executives from 116 companies and organizations.
If you have a job, you likely bear the fang marks.
Those surveyed were asked to list five characteristics of a low performer. The top five responses were: negative attitude, stirs up trouble, blames others, lacks initiative, and incompetence.
Low performers are often skilled in the art of work avoidance. They spend more time arguing their way out of tasks than it would take to complete them. They are good at identifying problems but not so good at finding solutions. They have well-crafted excuses for not getting anything done. And their sloth is often at the expense of more conscientious co-workers who must pick up their slack.
Many slackers, however, do not see themselves as slackers, preferring to blame others. Of the 87 percent who want to get away from low performers, half are probably low performers themselves, if other surveys can be believed.
For instance, more than half of American workers are not engaged in their jobs, according to a recent survey by Gallup. Most are “sleepwalking through their workdays,” Gallup says. But 17 percent are what Gallup calls the “actively disengaged.” The 23 million “actively disengaged” U.S. workers cost the national economy about $370 billion a year in lost productivity, Gallup says.
This helps explain the viability of websites such as www.IShouldBeWorking.com or www.BoredAtWork.com.
Or why nearly one-quarter of U.S. workers who use a computer at work have used it on company time to look for another job, according to a recent survey by Hudson, a New York-based staffing and executive-search company.
Or why 10 percent of workers consume alcohol at lunch during the workday, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com, called “Drinks on the Job.”
Or why 19 percent of workers tell lies at the office at least once a week, said another recent CareerBuilder.com survey.
Top reasons for lying are to: appease a customer, 26 percent; cover up a failed project, mistake or blown deadline, 13 percent; explain an absence or tardy arrival, 8 percent; and, get another employee in trouble or look better to a supervisor, 5 percent. (None, apparently, admitted lying to people who do workplace surveys.)
If companies hope to keep their best employees, they have to dump their worst, Murphy said. “If low performers start dictating the company’s culture, productivity, quality and service will all decline precipitously, and high performers will avoid your company like the plague.”
That is why former General Electric CEO Jack Welch fired the bottom 10 percent of his workforce each year. Welch used sports metaphors to justify this extreme practice, saying he wanted to work with A-team performers. He was roundly criticized as callous, but Welch would not have it any other way.
“I think the cruelest thing you can do to somebody is give them a head fake … nice appraisals … that’s called false kindness,” said Welch in the book, “The Jack Welch Lexicon of Leadership.”
There’s plenty of false kindness going around. In the Leadership IQ survey, only 14 percent of senior executives said their company effectively managed low performers. And only 17 percent of middle managers said they feel comfortable removing low performers.
“These people can be pretty intimidating,” Murphy said of low performers. “A lot of managers simply don’t want to deal with them. They will duck down a side hallway just to avoid engagement.”
Apparently, a lot of managers are slackers, too.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
