5 Types of Toxic Employees and How to Deal With Them (Infographic) When it comes to the troublemakers in your organization you have two choices: cut them out or rein them in. Here's how to do the latter, like a boss.

By Kim Lachance Shandrow

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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The catty gossip. The relentless bully. The slovenly slacker. Toxic employees come in an appalling array of annoying forms. They're destructive, distracting and draining. Like a cancer sapping the energy of those around them, they cripple their coworkers' morale, performance and productivity. Worse, they poison your entire business in the process.

When it comes to abominable employees, you have two choices. You can either cut them out of your org chart altogether or you can devise a plan to rehabilitate them. Their fate hinges on how awful they are to work with, the damage they've already done and how willing they are to change for the better.

Related: 4 Ways to Diffuse a Toxic Workplace

Before you decide if problematic workers should stay or go, it's wise to consider the many ways you can coach underperforming or downright irritating employees to success. Not every laggard is a lost cause. Affording tough cases another chance could save you the cost and hassle of hiring a replacement. What's more, it could even inspire other lollygagging employees to kick it up a notch and fast.

If you're thinking of braving the employee rehab road, check out the infographic from cloud communication company GetVoIP below. Neatly packed within you'll find five types of toxic employees and how to deal with them, hot messes, martyrs and, yep, sociopaths included.

Best of luck, boss. You've got this.

Click to Enlarge+
teoxic employees (Infographic)

Related: Seven Ways to Boost Employee Morale

Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here

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