How an Efficient Worker May Be Adverse to a Company-Publication

Employers tend to wrap their best workers in cotton-wool. Sure, they are usually worth three regular workers. Still, sometimes such high achievers may turn into a threat to the company. How can it happen? DP asked HR experts.

In the theory of management, there is a concept stating that workers consist of two groups: those who can, and those who want. There are usually four kinds of people working in a company: those who can and want (they’re loyal to the company and enjoy their work); those who want but can’t (enthusiasts who are happy to learn); those who can’t and don’t want (usually they don’t stay for long); and finally those who can but don’t want. The latter are usually highly qualified and efficient. Everybody knows how great they can work, and everyone sees how uninterested they are. “They are those who can produce 150 per cent of the plan, and the company relies on them greatly. Unexperienced managers usually sigh thinking of them, and say they’re irreplaceable,” says Semion Chernonozhkin, a business coach at Gustav Kaser Training International for Russia and former Soviet republics. “Those people are somewhere else. They’ll be the first to leave when a crisis strikes, and they’ll let everybody down. They take clientele with them, they sabotage work, and present you with the resignation note right before their vacation. They hit the road as soon as a crisis begins. They have to be sacked before all others.”

When the best worker transforms into a saboteur, it happens mostly in two possible cases, according to the experts: either they’re not interested in what they do any longer, or some sort of megalomania strikes them. Other cases are usually some variations of those two.

Stopping at Nothing 101

“The best workers become a deterrent for a company when their personal goals are no longer in line with those of the organization,” Rafail Aliyev, CEO of HR Soultion, says. “Either they outgrow the company, or the company enters a different business development phase and starts implementing new approaches.” Usually the employer doesn’t really notice the loss of its best employee. “Over time, employees tend to bend the rules: they do their job great but in their own way. Mostly they work for themselves at this stage. We can’t see why something is working great with them, we can’t transfer their success to other workers. If they quit, the company will face problems,” Alexander Genneberg, HR manager of AKC24, says.

Violetta Velenitskaia, head of Craftica project, notes that high achievers are mostly initiative people. Therefore, companies tend engaging in micromanagement issues and grants them some freedom. That is when the loss may occur.
Loosening of control often results in the fact that the former employee establishes their own company (thus becoming a competitor of their former employer), or joins a different company. The involved risks are huge: parental technologies, original products, promising developments, expertise, business processes and even clientele — all in your competitor’s hands. It may go very wrong.

Julia Sakharova, HeadHunter’s CEO for the North-West, notes: “When a key worker of the donor company quits, there are two possible negative options. Firstly, the donor company loses an effective resource (the person, his or her competence, business processes tied to them, expenses for the search of a substitution or rearrangement of business structure, and adaptation of a new employee.) Secondly, the receiving company reinforces their competitive edge.”
Natalia Krasnova, Head of HR-MBA program at MIRBIS, gives a different example when the employee doesn’t quit but still manages to sabotage the company: “A worker pursuing the best results stops at nothing, and eventually becomes effective at the expense of decreasing others’ efficiency. They just cease helping their colleagues. Such behavior on a corporate scale is very harmful.” It happens mostly because everyone spends their time to make their own mistakes in a competitive environment.

Non-absolute Assignment

He was never late, and was responsible for the greater part of the company’s profits. But then something went wrong. According to the experts, this ‘wrong’ is usually star sickness.
“Best employees are any employer’s mainstay. They put their stakes on them in all key projects. However, the best employee may turn saboteur when star sickness and hyperconfidence devour them,” says Larisa Bogdonova, CEO of IBC Human Resources & IBC Business Education.

“A high achiever employee is both a daydream and a nightmare of any manager. They just focus too much on their own uniqueness, their goals, and their valuability: they lose their interest in the team, and eventually destabilize the working environment,” says Marina Fomina, a psychologist.

“I fired many people because of that,” agrees Alexei Kravtsov, the President of the Union of the Courts of Arbitration. “The reason for it is in overvaluation of their internal status, or, in layman’s terms, pride. The very sin that becomes a burden. The worker becomes snooty, refuses to do routine work, and assigns it to other colleagues who aren’t always competent enough.”

Another consequence of this starness is sabotage, according to business coach Dmitri Lomot. “The best workers have their subordinates and broadcasts their experiences to them, but not completely, of course. They fear that there might be someone smart enough to remove them from office,” the expert says. Eventually, the best worker’s team doesn’t run at full blast: they always withhold something just to be on the safe side. The victim here, of course, is the business.
If such a worker is a domain specialist, its the worst, according to Maxim Selianchik, Deputy executive officer at TPK Beltimpax. “You ask them to create a training system, and they answer you just have to hire intelligent people. And you can’t fire them as it seems. You got very lucky to hire them in the first place, and if they leave, the company’s turnover will fail.”

According to Anastasia Khrisanfova, HR Director at SPSR Express, the high achiever’s peers might just ignore the emerging star sickness for a while, until the loss is too evident. “The thing is that the worker started being less demanding to their actions. They remain valuable only due to the reputation earned by their earlier achievements,” she noted.

However, there is a reverse of the star sickness: perfectionism.

“A colleague of mine likes to quote Ronald Reagan to such workers,” Lyudmila Shusterova, Director for Strategic Development at BDO Unicon Oustourcing, says. “Producers didn’t want them good, they wanted them Thursday. In other words, sometimes it’s more reasonable to have the work done in time, even if it will require later revisions. The best workers just can’t get a B, they got used to getting A+, so they disrupt all deadlines.”

So, as it turns out, the best workers are useful for a company only when constantly and, if possible, carefully controlled. If you loosen a grip a bit, you’ll get either a snotty manager, a new competitor, or a failing team.

Source: dp.ru