Mark Harbeke

In my writing here and in the collective voice of our content on improving employee retention through innovative team building strategies on our website, it is assumed that top-performing employees are also well-behaved employees.

But this is not always the case, as Maureen Dorgan-Clemens wrote last week on Working World Cafe, the blog of Chicago-based employer and employee services provider Perspectives Ltd. In fact, she says,

Unfortunately, disruptive professionals are often your highest performers, like top sales people, prominent surgeons or lawyers with the best trial record. They may be well-connected, high-profile "rainmakers" contributing significantly to your bottom line, and that can lure you into accepting their behavior.

Alas, that behavior can be costly. Every employee that leaves in order to avoid the disruptor costs a business at least $10,000 to replace and train. In addition, lawsuits by former employees can cost businesses tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. The damage to your brand image if customers begin complaining publicly, you end up in the media because of a lawsuit or organizations like the Better Business Bureau begin investigating you? More than you want to think about.

Dorgan-Clemens is absolutely right. What's more, the audience of small and midsized businesses we speak to and serve are even less equipped financially and in resource capacity to handle the bad ends she describes than their larger peers. If this scenario repeats itself, the long-term result is reduced competitive advantage.

Luckily, as Dorgan-Clemens points out, affordable employee assistance programs (EAPs) can help you put a framework in place to address this problem, and can even recommend "experienced behavioral coaches in your area." She goes on to lay out how this process can work – the end result when it comes to your bottom line likely being that "it will cost a fraction of what you'd end up paying if you lost even one employee or had to settle an employee grievance or lawsuit."

To learn more about EAPs and how they can improve your workplace team building, visit these links on our website:

You can also learn more from Perspectives Ltd directly – some of their staff will be at our 2009 conference on October 1 and 2 in Chicago.