Toxic Employees in the Workplace – Hidden Costs and How to Spot Them

In this original Cornerstone OnDemand research, we take on the question of whether one bad apple can really spoil the whole bunch when it comes to “toxic employees” in the workplace.

Leveraging econometric analysis of a dataset of approximately 63,000 hired employees spanning approximately 250,000 observations, this report looks not only at the measurable costs of toxic behavior such as sexual harassment, theft and fraud, but also other, equally damaging and harder-to-measure costs. The report examines these indirect costs closely, looking particularly at the toll toxic employees take on co-workers, and concludes that these costs create an even larger financial burden on businesses than the direct impact of an employee’s misbehavior.