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Cutting Your Losses
Some workers cause problems that not only sap morale but also open the company up to allegations of racial and sexual harassment. Quintanar recalls facing this problem at Antelope Valley Hospital, which has annual revenue of about $700 million. The problem stemmed from an employee who had an unstoppable habit of playing practical jokes on his co-workers.
For his first prank, the man bought a remote-controlled device that made farting sounds and hid it in a co-worker's office. "Every time there were two people in the room, he would push the button," Quintanar recalls. "No one knew where this thing was." He speculates that the prankster was moving the device to make it more difficult to find.
Eventually, Quintanar's staff found the device and linked it to the prankster. Quintanar told the employee he had to stop. Instead, the prankster took a new tack, which posed potential legal liabilities. He began using photo editing programs to paste his co-workers' faces into caricatures of people of different races and then emailed the result to the person. One staffer of Irish ancestry found his face pasted into a picture of a drunken Irishman. A staffer of Asian ancestry found her body pasted onto a picture of a person pulling a rickshaw. One of Asian Indian ancestry received a picture of himself in an American Indian headdress.
Each time, Quintanar ordered the prankster to stop, saying the photos were not funny and were in fact offensive. Some of the pranks' targets began complaining to human resources. Quintanar wrote the employee a formal letter, warning him his job was in danger. He advised the man to take advantage of the hospital's counseling services.
Instead of stopping, the prankster started a new trick: When he produced computer-generated billing or medicine administration reports for his co-workers, he added tiny print at the bottom of the digital copy of the report that made fun of a specific co-worker who was charged with printing the reports. The comments did not show up on the hard copy of the reports. In one case, he claimed to know the person's sexual preference.
It was too much, and Quintanar ultimately had to dismiss the man. Although everyone deserves a second chance, he says, "a lot of people can't be helped." As a manager, you can try to turn around a problem employee but at some point "you have to say, 'I'm sorry, you can't be helped -- at least not by me.'"
Although most staff is inherited, and it's impossible to predict what sorts of personnel problems a CIO will encounter, careful recruiting can reduce the odds of future problems.
Gartner's Walker recommends that CIOs carefully screen new employees by making sure the interview process addresses the applicant's work habits as well as his technology know-how. Specifically, CIOs should make sure potential hires share their ideas about issues like work hours, the amount of time that should be spent in the office, how to collaborate and how to handle disagreements. In addition to asking applicants directly, CIOs can find out about applicants' work habits during reference checks.
Better yet, try to hire through employee referrals. Employers generally have a good experience with these hires because a valued employee "senses that this person is going to fit in -- and that's almost half the battle," Walker says. "They know this person. They would not be likely to bring in someone they knew would not fit."
Joan Indiana Rigdon was a contributing writer for CIO Decisions. To comment on this story, email editor@ciodecisions.com.
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