Episode 12 – Top Employee with a Dark Past – Is performance enough?

What if the employee powering your business is also hiding a personal life that could tear everything down?

Substance abuse, reckless behavior, or moral conflicts—do these issues cancel out their value at work?

In this episode, we confront a dilemma many leaders face: Can you keep a high-performing employee whose personal choices clash with your company’s values?

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

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Philippe: All right. So today’s topic, uh, this is for business owners, okay?

So imagine business, okay, and your business is successful. And your business is successful because you have great employees. In every business is sales, right? Income profits in all business number one. So you need sales. So I was asked the question before what if you have a successful business and then sales team top sales guy or top sales girl the questioner let’s not go to the question context top sales manager top sales agent top sales guy or girl years, one one decade.

In that years, top performing contribute helping around build the your business and then model employee. What would you do? What would you do if you found out that your top sales employee or sales manager you accidentally you find out you discovered drug addict okay okay drug addict let’s say addict or alcoholic there’s another question what if child abuser or wife abuser or the other way around, husband abuser.

But in your business model employee,

Gab: So top performer, there’s this side now. There’s this bad side.

Philippe: There’s a dark side personal side. Yes. Okay. So that’s the main question. As a business owner, what would you do?

Gab: That’s a hard uh situation cuz this employee does something or is performing this company for the for the value employee. He he or she still add value to the company. It’s just that there there’s this dark side now. We don’t know. So if it doesn’t affect the like the the company or output company, it still depends on the situation. Do you think it’s it still affects the company? There’s this dark side of him or her.

Philippe: I think everyone’s different. Every business is every business owner is different. So others would say if they found out accidentally for example to the point so lifestyle choices is not align with the company’s values. So I asked that one business owner cuz they found out now uh that employee is deep into uh well invested in going to casinos having a great time to the point but it never affects her performance. It never affects her contribution to company. She is one of she that employee is one of the main reasons a company grew to success. Right? So now the dilemma of this uh business owner is to try to decide or should we retain her and ignore the fact that she has a bad lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah.

Gab: But here’s the thing. Uh the question is if he or she can add value to the company or since way to add value to the company, why can’t he or she do that for himself or herself?

Philippe: That’s your personal life. Say personal life, right? So for example, uh let’s get an example at work. You do you work you you perform the best that you can, but on outside work, you’re a guy who likes motorcycles. Yeah. Right. Other people would say that’s risky. Yeah. Motorcycles are risky. The percentage of deaths with motorcycles are very high, especially years, you know, as compared to four-wheelers, right? But that’s what you enjoy. That’s your stress reliever, right? Everyone has is different.

Some people would love to bungee jump, skydive, like maybe to you that okay, that’s that’s a little too far now, right? But those practices are not bad lifestyle. We’re talking about extreme bad lifestyle.

There’s another there was another business owner which this one was a sad one. Um child abuser when I say child abuser not physically but emotional emotional abuser. So in terms apparently they found out that the the wife best performer and everything but uh put things very hard on the kids tough love child abuser in terms of emotional child abuser but not physical. So father so that that leaves a dilemma to the business owner or or HR or the management. Should we remove this type of person in our team? Should we accept the fact that um his core values towards children and towards family doesn’t align with ours or do we keep him and we gain from his skills and his performance?

So that’s another dilemma.

Yeah. Alcoholic. Yeah. Sober during work after work. Uh straight straight to the bar and uh he drinks his heart out lit to the point as in red. So what would you do as a business owner if you found out that your employee is one or the other? Yeah. As let’s say business, what would you do?

Gab: I think if I had a company and then I had information with uh regarding one of my staff or employees, I’d start with creating an organization or this event. Now we do in our company where it’s something like health and wellness or it develops the the activities of each employee.

So if an employee is excelling in this kind of sport, we do this. So at the same time, if that’s if that’s a positive event, we can also do the the mental health uh events in the company. So the employees are more or they would feel more safe within the company. Now it’s up to them if they would be able to open up to the HR or whoever they’re going to be assigning in that event. So you know that’s that’s one situation where I would do or what I would do in my company as a business owner

Philippe: Sports and fitness intervention. Yes. Yeah. Something like that. Let’s say what if let’s say after like a whole let’s say month intervention and it doesn’t work would you still retain that employee?

Gab: I think it still depends like you said uh it’s as long as it doesn’t hinder him to do the output that he has to do and at the same time it doesn’t affect the company badly I think we should still consider other factors where you know before terminating that person even though you know he has or he or she has that dark side

Philippe: If you think about it there’s no grounds for termination yes you know actually uh you’re putting you’re digging your own grave as a If you’re going to terminate a person because they don’t align with your values, personal values, well, just because they have that dark side of them, it’s not Yeah, you’re right. It’s not there’s no grounds for termination. Yeah.

So, look, um I think it goes the same as um on a personal side. Uh it did happen to me like I think a few years back. I used to have a very close friend. He’s he was from down south. And then we were we were good buddies for quite quite a while. Quite a while. Talagan. We we only see each other like every like a month every month. And because he lives down south and then I think we’ve been friends for more than a decade. And then I found out that there was there was uh domestic abuse involved in in the situation.

At first I thought it was just measaw but because back in the past and then I found out that there there were some the children got involved not in a domestic violence but in something different. It was in it was I don’t know what they called it. Um yeah, sexual abuse. Mhm. Yeah.

I decided personally that why would I stay friends with someone like this who I don’t feel safe. I don’t I won’t feel safe him being around my family. Yeah. Maybe the domestic abuse, maybe, you know, our whole family knows how to box, how to kickbox, how to do martial arts. But with the kids, I don’t think I could trust a person like that around my daughter, around my my son, right?

So, if this same guy was my employee and he’s the one reason um the business went successful, it’s a really hard decision, you know.

Um, let’s say no boundaries. If I want to be a total, I’ll probably juice the guy up to the point where, okay, I need to get sales this much after that I’ll kick him out. Yeah, but you Yeah, I love your idea cuz intervention works uh but not % of the time, but it works at most if imagine you have a hobby. Yeah. me say risky

Gab: At some point if I was in that position I’d say it’s none of your concern exactly exactly my point right or okay right

Philippe: So exactly my point in those scenarios so that’s that’s a really big dilemma what do you I think why don’t we ask people uh let’s ask business owners.

Yeah. What do you guys think? Why don’t you guys comment below if you found out that an employee of yours has a really bad extreme lifestyle? Um one that’s alcoholic, someone who does drugs, someone who does who who does domestic violence and anything similar to that or maybe outside of that.

Uh it doesn’t matter. Why don’t you give us a comment down below and see what would you do as a business owner or as an HR or as a manager?

Would you still do intervention or would you still uh would you decide to just, you know, kick that person out and let’s find another, right?

What would what would your uh best scenario be? What would your best solution be?

Yeah, hit us up on the comments and then uh we’ll probably read them on our next podcast.