Employees can be a Liability
In general, all organisations aim to hire trustworthy, loyal, hardworking and conscientious employees who will carry out their duties to the best of their abilities. Many organisations fail to see how employee behaviour can place them at risk, but all organisations face a certain amount of liability with the employees they hire. To better understand the behavioural risks, it is a good idea to understand the behavioural preferences and personality characteristics of your employees.
Not knowing or understanding the behavioural preferences of employees and underlying weaknesses in managing employees can lead to behavioural risks, and these behavioural risks create organisational risks that can cost your company dearly and even result in the downfall of your organisation.
Risk Development Process
The following illustration explains the process of how your organisational risks develop:
- underlying risky practices may be present within the organisation. For example, the organisation may engage in risky actions (hiring without proper screening or testing of new hires) or inactions (not training employees properly or leaving certain issues unaddressed)
- this leads to an increase in behavioural risks, such as disengaged or frustrated employee, demotivated employees, disgruntled employees etc.
- these behavioural risks result in organisational risks that could cost your company through loss of productivity, theft, sabotage, loss of reputation etc.
Underlying factors or risky practices
To elaborate on the figure above, the following underlying factors or risky practices could be present in your organisation.
- Poor or insufficient training or lack of knowledge regarding standards, protocols, procedures security etc.
- Lack of motivation or using wrong motivators – poorly motivated employees don’t follow procedures, policies
- Lack of support
- Insufficient skills- & growth development
- Lack of trust
- High pressured environment
- Unmet expectations can lead to lower productivity and even sabotage
- Wrong hires or being in the wrong position: lack of skills/ abilities or mismatch of personality traits – this can lead to disengagement, employees not liking their jobs or not coping in their jobs, unfair treatment, personal issues such as depression etc.
- Unaddressed underlying personal problems such as depression, alcohol abuse, gambling etc.
- Underlying and unmanaged personality traits such as impulsivity or quick temper
- Unmanaged or high tolerance for destructive behaviour
- Poor communication – two way street: poor communication to employees and poor listening. Poorly communicated policies, expectations etc. are likely to be ignored. Similarly not listening to employee’s concerns, issues, position could lead to mistrust and disgruntlement.
- Complicated or impractical procedures, practices, policies, regulations etc. could lead to these not being followed. This can also be due to a mismatch of the culture of employees vs the culture of the company
- Misalignment of company goals with employee goals
- Ignorance of behavioural risks and poor risk management and safety procedures (such as preventative measures)
- Unmanaged interpersonal conflicts & unaddressed emotional intelligence issues
- Shortage of employees
- Poor leadership
Behavioural risks
What behavioural risks could your organisation be facing?
- Reckless employees
- Ignorant employees
- Negligent employees
- Disgruntled employees
- Pessimistic or negative employees
- Disengaged and unmotivated employees
- Low ethics/ morals
- Employees gossiping, disrespecting, bullying, causing conflict, disharmony among co-workers
- Insubordination
- Groupthink and destructive group behaviour, negative impact on co-workers
- Low work morale, poor performance
Outcomes/ Cost to Company
These behavioural risks could ultimately lead to the following outcomes:
- Theft, fraud, corruption and other criminal activities to improve their financial position
- Sabotage, damage to property and business
- Employee ignorance leading to criminals gaining access to your business, Intellectual Property, customer lists, property and/or products
- Recklessness or negligence leading to unnecessary losses, damage, injuries, accidents etc.
- Decrease in productivity or lower than prospective productivity; poorer performance
- Loss of valuable employees, high employee turnover
- Reputational damage
- Customer dissatisfaction
- Loss of profits/ bottom line
- High absenteeism, loss of work hours, high turnover costs, disability claims
- Costly legal expenses
- Violence in the workplace
Our Solutions
How we help you address your risks:
Profiling Worx offers solutions to address your risks by addressing it at all three levels.
We help you identify and assess the underlying risks you may be exposed to and offer you clear insight in the subsequent behavioural risks that you may be facing.
We can assist you with a full profile on your organisation as it relates to your people as well as profiles on your employees to better understand how to manage, coach, support them. This will ensure you get the most out of your workforce, whilst creating a happy and productive workforce.
Our interventions could include: training, workshops, coaching, policy development, intervention and strategy support, all of which is aimed to increase your productivity, bottom line and reduce your organisation’s costs and risks.
The illustration below offers a clearer view of our solutions at each level.
Your Next Step
Give us a call or send us an email to find out more or to schedule a free consultation to discuss your needs.