Survey: Employee backstabbing is rampant
August 28, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Assessing the right candidate, In This Week's E-Newsletter, Interviewing, Latest News & Views
Is your company hiring people who would hurt the team for the sake of individual glory?
It’s probably a lot more common than a lot of HR managers realize. Half of all advertising and marketing employees have been victims of backstabbing co-workers, according to a recent survey by The Creative Group.
Why don’t many companies realize this is happening? For one thing, when asked what they’d do if they worked with a backstabber, only 10% said they’d talk to a manager.
What’s it mean for HR? That HR pros should be on the lookout for candidates with backstabbing tendencies. During interviews, probe with questions about how people worked with teams and how they handled co-workers they disagreed with.
Tags: backstabbing, employee behavior, survey, The Creative Group
August 29th, 2008 at 11:26 am
What do you do when the employee is a relative of the owner?
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I’ve never had a back-stabber admit to being one, nor have I had them frequently answer questions in such a way as to tip their hand. Typically, they are very good manipulators, which is why, more often than not, going to a manager doesn’t work. Often, their manager has been snowed and manipulated into believing they are terrific. I tend to shy away from people who have all the “right” answers…the answers that all the books tell you to say. If a person can’t give me an honest answer to a question, I’m left to doubt their fit. I’ll ask more questions to try to discover what they really think or believe. If they keep giving me a canned “fashionable” responses, I pass on them.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
In my experience the backstabbers are usually the best behind smoochers as well so taking it to management rerely accomplishes anything.
I once worked with someone who continually put his name on accounts after someone else made the sale. It was easily tracked and obvious so three of us that it was happening to filed complaints. We were let go soon after and the theif is now a manager. Oh did I mention that the Manager and thief were buddies?
I have seen this happen three times (twice to me) and I have learned to just keep my mouth shut and let it happen. It seems most HR and Management don’t want the hassles of dealing with this type of an issue and the wistleblowers are seen as an annoyance to them.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:15 am
I have realised that the biggest problem with HR departments is that the HR team usaully has always worked in a position of authority , and never really as an employee. The big problem with this is that they have never really experienced severe backstabbing themselves, perhaps never worked an unreasonable boss, or for a very low salary. This is so important because it really helps them to realise who the culprits in the company are, based on their own experience.
Very importantly I want to say that it will be highly ineffective to just ask a candidate how they handle conflict!!! Anybody would be smart enough to know what answer to give.
Rather try this: Ask the candidate to enclose ALL colleagues of all the previous jobs on the CV and phone all of them. If the other previous collegues have the guts they will say this person was never a backstabber, but we had another backstabber here that nobody liked.Backstabbing happens almost everywhere you go, its the ratrace we live in. Some selfish people think its the answer to beat the ratrace, when it actually always backfires in a karmic way -some day!!
You cant Reealy ask the boss how the person is with other colleagues, because many bosses dont see what is really going on, and the backstabbers are very manipulative.Some bosses are so stupid that they think the innocent people are the culprits. The majority of colleagues will know what is happening but will be too scared to tell the boss, out of fear of looking like they are dissing the person for some selfish reason. You need to ask them individually and in private what they think of a persons personality and as a colleague. Even here you need to hear if the person is not dissing another person out of some jealous reason. Many things need to be probed.Remember also often bosses are not always on the scene to see what is going on.If you contacted an entire HISTORY of colleagues -important to contact ALL of them so that you know they are not all personal friends this will give a clue as to if the person is a backstabber or not.People can obviously just put their friends down there and thats not going to tell you anything.
Backstabbers are very,very selfish and manipulative people. ALL the ones that I encountered were at the same time goldiggers towards their partners in their personal life. Never paying for anything ,pushing rich men to marry them .Backstabbers also usually pretend to do so much for their colleagues , just because their colleagues are busy with something else, when they should be doing their own work. The diffrence here is that its not genuine help. They let the boss find out about their “help” on every occasion.Not only that but they will deliberatly built mistakes into the other persons project to make that person look incompetent.The person that this is being done to may not even realise it initally, it may take a while to realise , especially if the job discriptions for each employee are not very specific.When the building in of mistakes into other peoples task happens , people initially doubt themselves, because they its hard to remember every detail of everything that happened every day. They then might still appologize for something they never did in first place!!
Later only after many such stunts have been pulled do they only realise that this person is a selfish backstabber. Reasons for employers backstabbing employees? They cant do the work themselves and want the other person to look incompetent so that the focus is on the other person and not their own mistakes.Other reasons : Very insecure and dont want the other person to be successfull in life. Gives them a reason to say something bad in your reference.Especially if you may in FUTURE be competing fot the same job in the same company of in another company.
Reasons why colleagues backstab: 90 percent of the time its NOTHING the other person did or said at all!! They are mostly very ,very insecure people. They think they have to do this to conquer the ratrace. Either just to look better than everyone else, or to actually be promoted.It may also be that they are jealous or fear another persons abilities above theirs, or they may even be jealous of the things you have in your private life!!
July 19th, 2009 at 5:07 am
I have noticed that backstabbers are not just selfish in their backstabbing at work,but in all aspects of life! This could also serve as a good clue. What I mean is REALLY selfish in a big way. Goldiggers are very,very often backstabbers. After all what are they doing to their partners? Manipulating and backstabbing them severely for the sake of gaining their entire lifes work,without having to work a bit for it themselves!!What are they doing at work.Exatly the same. Backstabbing for the sake of personal gain!
They are also most often the ones that make many long,expensive personal calls from the office phone, without reimbursing the company one cent. My experience has also shown that most often they have parents that are very arrogant about their children. They grew up thinking they are always right and never had any trauma in their life where mummy would not back them up, They dont only have rich partners NOW, who spoil them rotten, their whole history of dating shows older men, or just even financially average men, but those men who are vulnerable and naive, and will pay nearly everything for them.
They are SECRETLY always late on the days that nobody else might know because of shift work. However if somebody else might be a couple of minutes late,(Even if it makes no diffrence to anybody or anything) they will make sure the boss finds out.For example they will say infront of a person and the boss: “Just make sure you are here at 4pm for this client”.-Making as if you are ALWAYS late,and making as if they are never late themselves.There is no need to say this infront of the boss,especially if that person is not usually late ,or very seldom ( by a few minutes) and thus should not be expected to be late.
I really believe what may work well in any business is to have an exact job assigned to every indivual and to have those jobs overlap as little as possible.Unfortunatly in a world with selfish,dishonest people one has to find solutions like this. This way everybody does their own job, and nobody interferes with the other persons job. Its easier to keep backstabbers out of you work, and its easier to trace who did what.