Imagine having employees like this…

15 July, 2025

They thrived because no one stopped them.

 

One Minute Summary

Difficult employees avoiding their required work, indulging in bullying colleagues and undermining managers can make life a misery for everyone. A Hunter Employee Relations client had three such employees who, working in unison, were having a variety of negative impacts on the workplace including stressing out other employees and causing others to resign.

After interviewing former employees to understand the behavioural context we were soon given the opportunity to focus our attention on the ringleader. After she was suspended, we undertook an investigation into her behaviours which resulted in her resigning her position. The other two employees resigned shortly after we turned the spotlight on them.

We cannot blame the manager for not dealing with this situation. It is very difficult to deal with one, let alone three, difficult employees. Managers often feel helpless and are too busy dealing with the fallout among those staff still remaining while trying to keep the business running.

Such situations are often complex, and managers should not tackle them alone. Despite exhibiting such behaviours these employees have multiple legal avenues to challenge a termination. Getting it wrong can result in reinstatement or a very large compensation payment or both.                                     

 

Three long serving senior employees (all in their 50s) who had been employed by one of my clients in the education sector were causing significant problems at the workplace. Young staff were being bullied, the manager (who was younger than the three) was bullied and disrespected and several good staff had already left as a result.

In further discussions it became apparent that:

  • There was a so called ‘ringleader’ of the three who was bitter when she did not receive the manager’s role several years ago. She decided to make the younger manager’s life a misery by undermining her with other staff, being disrespectful toward her in front of others and bullying the manager.  It was clear that she was pressuring her to throw in the towel and resign – potentially thinking she would get the manager’s role this time.
  • The same person also bullied the much younger female staff who had less work experience and also less life experience in how to respond to such behaviour. She undermined their confidence, refused to assist them and regularly raised complaints about them.
  • Her two offsiders, who were not quite as brazen, were undertaking similar actions mostly focussed on isolating or bullying younger staff as well as backing up (often false / exaggerated) accusations made by the ringleader against staff she didn’t like.

The results of these behaviours were:

  • A very stressed manager who not only had to deal with the personal assault but also with the impacts on younger employees who were often distressed.
  • Younger employees who felt bullied and victimised who dragged themselves to work or took more sick leave in order to avoid the undesirable workplace behaviours.
  • The loss of several good employees who had resigned and found work elsewhere.
  • The forming of cliques and divisions within the workplace.
  • Casual staff, who previously filled in the gaps covering sick leave etc, found casual work elsewhere thereby causing regular staffing shortfalls. Where gaps could not be covered the manager had to work and attend to her other duties after hours.
  • Overall team morale problems and increased work stress.

As you can see this was not heading in a good direction and the manager was at a loss how to deal with this situation and asked for help.

Moving quickly, we started to confidentially interview several employees who had left. It was clear they liked the manager, had loved working there but did not want to continue working in such an undesirable workplace environment. While they spoke highly of the manager it became clear she had no idea of how to start dealing with the three bullies.

After gaining a good picture from former employees we waited for the next opportunity for the ringleader to show her colours which did not take long.

To cut a long story short - after suspending the employee and initiating an investigation process involving interviewing all the other employees, she decided to resign just prior to being given the opportunity to provide her version of events. In the weeks that followed we focussed our attention on the two remaining problem employees to change their behaviours.  They both resigned their position once they felt they were under close review.  

Once the three experienced staff had departed to ‘greener pastures’ the workplace culture changed dramatically in a positive direction.

Commentary

Managers need to take the view that ultimately, it’s the employee themselves who decides whether they are going to stay and exhibit acceptable workplace behaviours or whether they will leave. Managers need to set the acceptable behaviour parameters and then stand by them.

Unless it’s a serious offence requiring summary dismissal, in most cases employees deserve a chance at changing their behaviour.

But not in every case.

In this case the ringleader had well and truly exhibited her attitude and personality for some time there was only one option to solve this problem. However, we needed to ensure procedural fairness.

Just like you cannot ask a General Practitioner to perform complex surgery and expect a satisfactory result, you cannot expect a manager to deal with a complex people problem such as this.

Let’s simplify the situation a little and say you just have one difficult employee. They still have multiple legal rights, and it can cost you substantially if you get it wrong.

If you look back through the past Employee Relations Updates you’ll see lots of examples of where it has gone wrong including compensation payments of up to several hundred thousand dollars. Reinstatement is also possible meaning its possible you could have them back in your workplace and feeling very ‘protected’ once that happens. Paying your way out of an unfair dismissal reinstatement Order will be quite expensive.

Can you train people to deal with this?

You can train people to (try and) ‘manage’ this type of behaviour. It still takes its toll as it drags along.

You can train people to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s to get the procedure right. Sometimes this can take a long time. I’ve seen enough problem employee files with lots of expired warnings.  

but if you want to fix it that’s another story. You need to get professional assistance.

A key aspect of dealing with these matters is to take action before too much damage sets in. It doesn’t make sense for organisations to stress out or lose good staff while hoping the cause will simply disappear. It doesn’t happen.

 

It is recommended that employers seek professional advice in relation to termination decisions to minimise the risk of large compensation payments for simple errors.

Kind Regards
Michael Schmidt
M 0438 129 728
[email protected]
www.hunteremployeerelations.com.au

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