Set The Benchmark

I recently read an article regarding the toxic cultures created in businesses such as Macquarie Bank, Uber and Fox News. These toxic cultures have been protecting employees demonstrating bad behaviour relating to a number of issues including drug taking, sexist and chauvinistic behaviour. These businesses chose not to take any action against these employees who, in most cases, were apparently high performers.

What does it say about a business when they decide not to take action? Is it because they are ‘scared’ of losing their high performers?

I viewed a video some time ago where an employer was boasting about firing some of his high performers. He said it now meant his business ‘hired slow and fired fast’. There must be something wrong with how they’re hiring and what happens once the employee is in the workplace if they’re still needing to fire fast!

With both of these examples there are obviously glaring gaps in how employees are being recruited, how they are onboarded and inducted and how often their performance is being discussed with them, if at all.

Issues of not dealing with bad behaviour are common. The consequences of not dealing with the bad behaviour is that the precedent is set. Once employees see that one employee can get away with that behaviour, they will think they all can. The longer the behaviour is left to grow and become part of the culture of the business, the longer and harder it will be to eradicate it.

It all begins with the recruitment phase. Candidates can have the greatest skillset in the world but they must share those behaviours which your business believes are important to how you operate your business – internally and externally. When you are inducting them you must advise them of these behaviours, your expectations and the consequences of not meeting these expectations. And there most definitely is a benefit to having regular discussions specifically about employee performance.

Importantly, if an employee breaches company behaviours, act quickly. It is the best way to change behaviour. Just like children!

How well are your employees behaving?