Well . . . it turns out that it can - from a biological/botanical perspective anyway. But does that metaphor apply to the workplace?
It seems that there’s reason to be very cautious about casually allowing people with bad attitudes to enter and remain in a workplace. Consider the following stats from LeadershipIQ:
87% of employees say that they have wanted to change jobs while working with someone who had a terrible attitude
93% of workers say they’re less productive when they work with folks who have poor attitudes
89% of new hires who fail within 18 months lose their jobs not because of their performance, but because of their attitude issues.
If these people are poor performers terminating their employment may not be a difficult decision. But what if they are high performers working with bad apples? Is it worth it to risk the loss of high performers who work for or with these people with poor attitudes that can very negatively impact others? Even if the bad apple IS a high performer, the risk to the entire company is the same and the remedy should be the same—-remove them before their bad attitude can impact everyone.
Just like real apples, these people manage to infect those around them with the venom of their negativity, their complaining, their bullying, their gossiping, their spreading of untruths, their lack of support for company values - and on and on. The least negative thing that happens is that other people lose their enthusiasm, their engagement lessens, and their team spirit is reduced. They show up in body but the spirit that made them valuable employees dissipates. The worst thing that can happen is that they leave the company altogether, and are replaced by workers who find the toxic atmosphere to their liking. Then the negativity takes hold more dynamically and the entire company is in danger of being taken down by it - eventually.
So . . . what could be done to counteract this difficult situation? There are many things. Number 1 is that the initial Leader would understand the threat at the outset and remove the first negative person, thus restoring the company to its historical balance. However, the learning from this event ought to be that there had been an invasion - someone had been hired who would never have meshed with the values of the company; and how had that happened? Perhaps it would be time to re-evaluate hiring practices. Or, 2 - create a Task Force of multi-level employees to review existing hiring practices, the company mission and values, and present initial options for more in-depth discussion at a Town Hall type meeting, to involve a broader range of employees in this issue. All it takes is one bad apple, unidentified as such, to eventually ruin a fine organization that’s not alert enough to foresee the danger and deal with it effectively.