I think the best way to put this is sometimes you have people who just hurt morale for the business as a whole.

These people can be classified into two camps, in my opinion… the Ne’er-Do-Wells and the Boat Anchors.

Ne’er-Do-Wells are those people who intentionally undermine morale. They gossip. They bad-mouth those who don’t necessarily deserve it. They’re just sour-grapes type people. They can also do crap like stealing, embezzling, yelling at co-workers, etc. These people are easy to spot and they’re easy enough to get rid of too… because you don’t like them usually.

Boat Anchors are a more insidious bunch. They’re the people who everyone questions. “Why are they here? What value do they add to the company/organization/club? Do they even do anything?” Boat Anchors can be further subdivided into Silent or Useless.

Useless Boat Anchors are the type who really don’t add any appreciable value to the organization. For whatever reason, they stumble through their job doing very little to actually help the bottom line or generate ideas for the company. They’re the VP who’s “been here forever” so “we can’t fire him”. Or the new hire you don’t want to admit was a really crappy hiring decision. In either case, you gotta let them go. When people see others in the organization who they feel don’t add value or are incompetent, they talk… and then they figure they don’t necessarily need to add value either.

The other class of Boat Anchors is the Silent Boat Anchor (SBA). This type really does add value and push the organization forward, but they do it from the shadows or through influence on other people. What’s that you say? You want that type of person in your organization? So would I. But I’d want people to know of their accomplishments. Because if you’re a SBA’s manager and you seem to be the only one who realizes all that they do (and they really do do all that… look at it objectively) then it’s your fault that person’s become a drag on morale. Raise up that person’s achievements to the whole organization (or at least a large part of it) and let people know that yes, Sally is adding value and we need her “on the bus”.

So… the first thing to do is objectively look at the person’s contribution and decide if they’re useless or just silent. If they’re useless, get them off the payroll as quickly as possible. If they’re silent, raise them up for the world to see.

The answer can only be A) or B)… so solve the problem, eh?