Dealing with the problem employee

One of your co-workers is a known problem employee; technically brilliant but socially very awkward.  For years he’s been disrupting every project team he’s been assigned to so we know the problem is not with the various project managers or team members; he just doesn’t get along with others.  Management keep him around for his technical skills.  This time he’s been assigned to your team.  Your management is not dealing with the problem, it is passing it on to you; what can you do?

The obvious choice is to do like all others before you; grin (or grind your teeth) and bear it.  Been there, won’t do that again.

Let me suggest what I’ll call the “hard-nosed PM” way of dealing with a problem employee.  Just don’t!  Don’t schedule work for him in your project; instead increase the paid workload of the other team members, effectively monetarily rewarding team players.  My approach may be mean and nasty but it actually works; here are anecdotes that support this:

• The president of a company I worked for in the past had a saying (loosely quoted); “When no one wants to work with you anymore you are out. This is a business, not a charity”. Return the problem to your management.
• A friend of mine actually had team members come see him and beg for a problem employee to be kicked out; they swore that they’d do the work even with the team being one man short. Interestingly, they ended up doing the work without paid overtime; the problem employee was that disruptive!
• A project manager I worked for years ago actually told management outright that he would not use two problem employees. The applied pressure but he resisted. Both guys were fired shortly after.
• I had to remove a problem employee from an on-site project, returning him to the office. Management tried to stick him on another team but I got to that project’s PM first and he refused to use the guy.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Comments

[Phil]

You could send him to Mexico. If he survives, it might do a lot for his career.

[steph]

Oh, this is all too familiar to me. I find myself taking on work loads just to make a person go away.

[record management]

Hey! Great post... We are all familiar with this phenomena... I really hope that your tips will help :)