All workplaces have had at least one employee who others didn’t want to be around. New research looks at the exact effects those jerks may have had on their co-workers.

Christine Porath and Christine Pearson of the Harvard Business Review spent a decade studying “office incivility” to determine its overall effects on the workforce.

The conclusions: Responses from jerks’ victims range from anger to vengeance. Also, the damage to job satisfaction and tenure may be more significant than many managers realize.

Based on responses from thousands of managers and employees, those with anti-social co-workers exhibit:

• a decrease in effort (48%)
• less time spent in the office (47%), and
• lower quality of work (38%).

Though many managers may brush aside concerns about office jerks, numbers like that suggest more action needs to be taken.

The bottom line: If a troublesome employee is allowed to continue that behavior, it might not be long before good workers start to become distracted — or leave the company at the first opportunity.

Tags: anti-social, discipline, workplace jerks