There's a well-known saying in business: 'People don't leave companies, they leave managers.' Popularised by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their 1999 book First, Break All the Rules, it has become one of the most quoted observations about employee retention and with good reason.
Leadership has an enormous influence on whether people stay or leave and more than twenty-five years after the theory was first floated, along with the introduction of multiple pieces of legislation designed to protect staff in the workplace, many good employees are still quietly walking away from a job because of one individual they find difficult to work with.
It usually doesn't start with a dramatic argument or a formal complaint. Instead, you notice that someone who was once enthusiastic becomes quieter in meetings or stops contributing ideas. A high performer who never looked at job boards suddenly updates their LinkedIn profile, then before long, they resign.
Every workplace has individuals with different personalities and healthy disagreement is part of any successful decision making or problem solving within a team. But there's a significant difference between someone who is challenging and someone who is consistently toxic.
Toxic employees rarely see themselves as the problem. They may undermine colleagues, create unnecessary conflict, spread negativity, resist change or simply drain the energy from everyone around them. Individually, these behaviours might seem manageable, however, collectively, they can slowly reshape the entire workplace culture.
The greatest cost to the company is the loss of talented people who quiety decide they've had enough and the true reason for their departure goes unnoticed or is overlooked.
High performers generally have options and don't usually complain loudly or create drama. Instead, its less confrontational for them to disengage, become less productive and eventually leave for an environment where they can focus on doing great work, rather than navigating workplace politics.
Ironically, the employee creating the problem is the one that often stays, while the people you most want to keep walk out the door and by the time this happens, replacing the departing employee is only part of the cost. You've lost experience, client relationships, productivity, team morale and often months of momentum. Recruitment, onboarding and training are expensive but resetting workplace culture is much more difficult and can take months to get back to where it once was.
As recruiters, we regularly speak with candidates who say they loved their job, their manager and the business but eventually reach a tipping point when they could no longer work alongside someone whose behaviour had gone unchecked for too long.
A good company culture is built by defining clear core values, having leaders model those behaviours daily while maintaining open, transparent communication. Every business has difficult conversations it would rather avoid and addressing poor behaviour is one of them, yet those conversations are almost always easier than replacing great employees who decided it wasn't worth staying.
If you've noticed increased turnover, lower engagement or a team that simply doesn't feel the same, it might just be worth thinking about whether the reason is in plain view, sitting in the office.