Expense | Business Solutions

The Astounding Cost of Passive-Aggressive Behavior

Passive-aggressive behavior is one of the most insidious and costly forms of sabotage a business can encounter. I have personally seen individuals and groups cost their employers millions of dollars, damage the business reputation and actually put people’s lives at risk with these behaviors.

A detailed study by Booze Allen Hamilton showed that entire companies can take on passive-aggressive traits. These passive-aggressive companies fare poorly compared to their peers with about half less profitable. They are marked by second-guessing of decisions, poor communication, poor decision-making and a general ability to make progress. The best workers leave.

Passive-aggressive personality disorder (also referred to as negativistic personality disorder) is a controversial personality disorder marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive resistance in many interpersonal situations both on and off the job. The passive-aggressive can smile and say “yes” while they have absolutely no intention of doing anything other than “no.” They can ruin your life and damage your company if you let them.

You may refer to the passive-aggressive person in less than endearing terms as, it seems, they try to turn your life upside down. The passive-aggressive is one of the most distracting, disruptive and generally unpleasant personality types that most of us ever come into contact with. Since the passive-aggressive doesn’t wear a sign, you’ll only recognize them by their behavior. Some their behaviors are listed in this list.

Common Passive-Aggressive Behaviors

·      Sulks or argues
·      Intentional inefficiency
·      Complains without justification of unreasonable demands
·      “Forgets” obligations
·      Believes he is doing a much better job than others think
·      Resents suggestions from others
·      Fails to do his share
·      Unreasonably criticizes authority figures
·      Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness
·      Blaming others
·      Chronic lateness and forgetfulness
·      Does not express hostility or anger openly
·      Fosters chaos
·      Making excuses and lying
·      Obstructionism
·      Resentment
·      Sarcasm
·      Sullenness
·      Mad at the world
·      Envious and resentful
·      Feels cheated by life
·     Procrastinates
·     Alternately hostile and clingy

A passive-aggressive may not have all of these behaviors, and may have other non-passive-aggressive traits. Cecil Adams writes: “Merely being passive-aggressive isn’t a disorder but a behavior — sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation. It’s only pathological if it’s a habitual, crippling response reflecting a pervasively pessimistic attitude”

Very few individuals have the disorder but all too many people have the bad behaviors associated with passive-aggressive personality. And, as the saying goes, one bad apple will spoil the bunch.

Dealing with the passive-aggressive person:
I agree that the passive-aggressive response is a great way to get out of doing things. Just say you will and then don’t. It’s often simpler and more effective than justifying your real thoughts to a less than receptive audience.

The problem comes when the passive-aggressive tries to take over your life to suit their needs. You need to recognize the situation and take action.

As an individual you have very few choices in dealing with passive-aggressive behaviors by others:
1. You can stop providing a payoff to the passive-aggressive by not giving in to their manipulation. You teach people how to treat you – and some may learn.
2. Ask them to stop and pray that they’ll change their behavior toward you. Yes, I said “pray” because the truth is that you can do essentially nothing to change other people.
3. You can withdraw from the situation. Take care of yourself and associate only with people who treat you as they should. This may be the only solution in extreme cases.

As a co-worker you may find your own satisfaction and career at risk because of the actions of passive-aggressive co-workers. Options may include:
1. Asking the offending party for cooperation and better behavior.
2. Document situations and clearly identify responsibilities to substantiate a claim to management.
3. Remove them or yourself from the situation.

As a boss or employer you carry the responsibility to take action.
1. Don’t hire passive-aggressive personalities in the first place.
2. Make it clear that the passive-aggressive behaviors are not tolerated in your organization.
3. Find out who is passive-aggressive and offer guidance and corrective action promptly when you observe these negative behaviors. The passive-aggressive is often very skilled at flying below the radar so you’ll have to look hard. A good place to start is with departments, groups or teams that are not meeting their goals. Then you’ll have to be a detective to find the truth.
4. Take disciplinary action quickly when appropriate and if necessary following your company employee policy manual.
5. Make sure you company has clear lines of communication, well delineated responsibilities and well defined decision making.
6. Remove recalcitrant offenders from the organization.

My first working title for this paper was “Passive-aggressive Poison.” That’s really what these behaviors do to relationships and the workplace…poison them. Take the cure before it kills you.

What are you going to do now that you know better than to tolerate such behaviors?

In my real-world experience, applying the Profit Improvement Process is an effective and efficient way to expose and neutralize negative behaviors.

Reduce Your Cost for Space

Have you thought about your space lately?

Space is an asset until it is no longer producing adequate income. Then it becomes an anchor on profits. The costs of using space go far beyond rent, lease payments, mortgages, taxes and utilities. Here are four steps to take to see if you can reduce your space costs:

Dig deep and find out what the true cost of ownership is for every space you have.
Review how productive each space is for your business. How much revenue does it support or generate? Retail space is usually measured in revenue per unit space (e.g. $/square foot).
Ask yourself what would happen if we reduced or eliminated this space?
Once you know the answers to #3, see if you can eliminate the space, reduce the space or put it to other productive uses.

One of our clients that did this reduced costs by $95,000 per year and then sold an entire building for a significant profit.

Who is Stealing Your Profits

The question for you is not “if” your profits are being stolen but the only question is “Who is stealing how much?”

The estimate of embezzlement for the US alone in 2018 was almost $50 billion. This included robbery, cargo theft, larceny and burglary. The top incidents were organized retail crime, employee theft, fraud, burglary, counterfeiting and robbery. Note that employee theft far exceeded the losses due to robbery. In a 2017 survey by Hiscox* the median dollar amount for small or mid-sized businesses (under 500 employees) was $289,864. The median loss for companies with over 500 employees was estimated to be $452,025.

Hiscok provides the following common characteristics to look out for:

Intelligent and curious – eager to know how everything in the office works
Extravagant – often flaunt their wealth
Egotistical risk-taker – rule breaker on and off the job
Diligent and ambitious – beware of the person who does not take vacations
Disgruntled – feel treated unfairly and may want to even the score

I’ll add one more from experience: They are the manager, accountant, controller, bookkeeper or clerk who just can’t get the reports straight and on time. They love disorder in which to hide their own dealings.

According to the National Retail Federation retail goods shrinkage of $48.9 billion is due to four major sources: employee theft (30%), shoplifting (36.5%), administrative error (21.3%), vendor fraud/error (5.4%) and unknown loss (6.8%).**

None of these figures include the billions of dollars lost to employee time that is deliberately wasted, time card falsification, inflated expense accounts, office supplies that end up at home and countless other ways in which employees waste company time and money. Excuse me while I check my FB account…

A number of years ago a senior sales executive (over 25 years with the company) warned me not to make him work from home because he assured me that he would extract the “cost” from the company in any number of ways that the company could never detect. I was no longer with that company when that move was finally made to save money so I don’t know how much, if any, this long-term employee extracted in “payment.” I often wondered which of his supervisors allowed him to harbor such a terrible attitude.

Just within this year two priests in my city have been indicted for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their churches. Prevention is a wise thing to do and don’t forget to help keep your employees honest with good systems and audits while you are locking the front door. Embezzlement and shrinkage is just two aspects of the element of Loss which is part of the Profit Equation.

How much of your hard-earned profits can you afford to allow the thieves within and outside your business to take?

References:

*THE 2017 HISCOX Embezzlement Study

** 2017 National Retail Security Survey

People Expense or Asset?

The mantra of Profit Improvement is: “You cannot cut your way to long term success.” Reference: Achieving World-Class Profit Improvement.

You must engage and empower your people to have any chance of success. Engage them with leadership and empower them with training.

Do you look at your payroll and think “expense” or “asset?”

When the pressure is on to increase profits it can be very challenging to answer this question properly. The right answers can be vital to success or, in some cases, survival.

The reality is that people cost money but without their productive efforts most businesses will fail. You have two questions you can ask when you look at payroll:

How can I cut payroll costs? This is the “expense” question that infers that payroll is a burden.
How can I increase revenues and profit from my existing payroll? This is the “asset” question that infers that payroll is a source of revenues.

Best practices asks both of these questions but asks #2 first. It is incumbent upon management to maximize the revenue generating capability of their staff before resorting to cutting head count.

The mantra of Profit Improvement is: “You cannot cut your way to long term success.” Reference: Achieving World-Class Profit Improvement.

You must engage and empower your people to have any chance of success. Engage them with leadership and empower them with training.

What’s it worth? It’s worth everything.

Save Money on Fees

The other questions to ask your financial people and your bankers are what hidden fees are you paying and what hidden costs are you incurring. These show up in the form of minimum account balances, accounts that don’t earn interest and quite often in lower than market interest rates earned.

How much are you spending on bank fees? It could easily be hundreds to thousands of dollars annually. Even if you think it is zero how much do you think you are paying in hidden fees?

This can be a tough one to answer so you might want to pass this one on to your company bookkeeper or controller.

We all know about the usual highly visible fees such as those associated with minimum deposits, check processing fees, account maintenance fees, returned check fees and on and on. What you may not be aware of, however, is the fact that banks are continuously adding new fees to try to bolster their profits. The easiest approach might be to have someone sit down with representatives from your banks and ask them to explain what fees you have paid in the last 6 to 12 months and how to reduce them.