CEO’s find the truth hard to handle at times.  Especially regarding employee relations issues, and their resulting effects on morale, quality and productivity.  For example, the CEO may have a hard time believing one of their top performers is a certifiable asshole who is damaging the company’s morale and causing a deterioration of trust in leadership.

The good news is there is a five step program for ridding your company of corporate assholes who have burrowed themselves inside your organization.

Step #1 - Admit assholes are bad for business. Recognize that assholes are bad for the organization. Yes, take that truth syrum and walk over from the dark side to the light.  Believe it or not, there are some CEO’s who think a few assholes scattered throughout the organization actually increase productivity. If this is the case, why not give those assholes some chains and whips to help their cause and instill greater fear.  If fear really works, why not increase the fear for greater effect? Nonsense!  You know it and I know it; assholes must be terminated.

Step #2 - Understand assholes are expert kiss-ups. Understand that assholes are masters at managing up, kissing up and brownnosing, all while causing terror down the corporate ladder.  While you are feeling good about your asshole, he is instilling fear in your organization. As the CEO, the asshole who is your direct report typically makes you feel good when you are around them.  It feels good to have your back end massaged by these clever manipulators.  They are experts at massaging your backside in order to protect theirs.

Step #3 - Adopt, model and promote your company’s code of conduct. I recommend your company also adopt an Anti-Bullying and No-Jerk policy.  Why?  The Workplace Bullying Institute and Zogby research indicate that 37% of American workers have been bullied at work.  That is almost 4 out of 10 employees.  Bullying is four times more prevalent than illegal harassment, yet most companies overlook it.  Because this has become such a prevalent workplace problem, a number of respectable companies have adoped No Jerk Hiring Policies:

“No Jerk Policy” Hall of Fame Companies

Barclays Capital | SPM Communications | Lloyd Gosselink Attorneys at Law

IDEO | Sterling Foundation Management | Gold’s Gym | van Aartrijk Group

Robert W. Baird | The Wine Buyer | Mozilla | Washington Mutual | SuccessFactors

Arup | Goldcorp | Hamilton Canada

Step #4 - Require thorough investigations and no cover-ups. Make sure human resources completely investigates claims of workplace bullying by corporate assholes.  The typical response will be for HR to conspire with or feel pressure from the asshole manager and eventually assist in the firing of the targeted employee or employees.  This allows the evidence to be terminated and walk out the front door.  In other words, assholes like to eliminate their dirty laundry.  Require HR to document the behavior, obtain witness accounts and submit a full written report to the CEO office.  Identify patterns of behavior and provide support to human resources when they recommend bullies and assholes undergo counseling.  Finally, terminate jerks if they don’t straighten up, regardless of their position in the company.

Step #5 - Communicate to stakeholders your company is a Jerk Free Zone. Communicate to employees, applicants and stakeholders your company is a Jerk Free Zone.  Don’t even permit customers to treat your employees terribly.  If you want to create a high-performance team environment, protect your employees.  Sure, develop lofty goals for your team members and create high performance expectations.  Driving out fear in the workplace will almost ensure your organization will be successful. Do this and success will follow you wherever you go.

One by one, a long line of unsuspecting recruits accepted, and eventually quit, the marketing assistant position. The problem was the department manager. Although clever and politically connected, her devilish ways wreaked havoc on her people. Each time the position opened up, recruiters would search for the right candidate with Teflon skin and stone-cold emotions. Most victims, however, transferred to another department or altogether quit within a few short months.

It didn’t usually take more than a week or two before the next new recruit would schedule their first meeting with our employee relations manager to solicit advice in dealing with their bully boss. With a leadership blind spot the size of Nova Scotia, the marketing manager was convinced each new recruit was a complete idiot. She never accepted individual responsibility for her own department’s revolving door.

Then there was the employee who had a nervous breakdown during the lunch hour.

After just a few weeks on the job, the assistant had to be hospitalized in a mental health facility after she was found by police, dangerously parked on a busy expressway. Apparently she mentally shut down after experiencing weeks of severe anxiety trying to cope with the maddening manager.

As the HR director, I expressed my deep concern to the president that it would be completely unethical to hire one more potential target for this inhumane manager. Her evil management style literally caused the employee’s nervous breakdown.

You think this decision would be a no-brainer, right? Wrong! Although she was the queen of caustic culture, the president felt she was technically competent and too valuable to terminate.

Why do companies put up with bullying managers? According to the 2007 Workplace Bullying Institute-Zogby Survey, bullying is inhumane but not illegal. Results of the survey showed the following reasons workplaces continue to employ health destroying bully managers.

• Forty percent (40%) of targets do not come forward.
• In 80% of cases, bullying is legal.
• Sixty-two percent (62%) of employers either do nothing or worsen the situation by retaliating against the target.
• Seventy-three percent (73%) of bullies are managers - senior managers and HR reflexively side with management when disputes arise.
• Bullies derive 73% of their support from executives, peer managers and HR.
• Executives are afraid to act. They have a disproportionate fear of lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or sanction the bully.
• Bullies invented their reputation as indispensable high-performers in case they were ever exposed. Target complainants are then not believed.
• Employers don’t actually know how to stop it. They forgot the lessons learned from having to correct and prevent illegal discrimination.
• Employers don’t recognize bullying as violence in the workplace. The problem is erroneously defined as “conflict,” and the wrong solutions are applied.
• Our society is highly aggressive and competitive. Bullies embody these two popular tactics. Hostility is more normative than the exception. So, bullying, abuse and psychological violence at work is positively embraced more often than despised.