We may never know or understand what motivates a person to get into criminal activity. It may be fear, peer pressure, financial issues, or family problems. It may be other reasons that are known only to the individual. What we do know is that sometimes, people who are making criminal choices are working alongside us. We can’t pretend this doesn’t happen just because it’s an uncomfortable topic for some people to think about. The impact of illegal behavior on a workplace can take a number of forms. People may steal from the company, gain access to confidential information and use it for personal gain, exploit customers, or even use their workplace as an operational outpost for their criminal enterprise. Even if people are engaged in criminal activity strictly outside of work, the effects of that entanglement can still greatly impact the environment. That’s why its a priority for employers to carry out the necessary checks (such as a people search) before even considering to employ these kinds of people, this way you may be able to catch them out beforehand as they would have had to legally note down any previous crimes or convictions. Although, this isn’t always the case, and people can start their criminal activity they step foot into the workplace, so you just have to be careful and keep them on record to ensure they’re not let back into the business again.
Signs can include sudden unexplained improvement in socioeconomic status, secretive behavior, bragging about their exploits, co-workers witnessing suspicious transactions, or association with questionable people. These people have zero interest in changing their behavior because they are profiting from it too much. All the advanced communication skills workshops in the world won’t help when dealing with this kind of issue. These individuals don’t honor the spirit or mission of a workplace, they corrode it. If they perceive someone as interfering with their activities, they can turn dangerous or even violent.
We are going to cover options for handling this kind of situation at a later date. For now it is simply important to understand that when someone is causing serious disruption to a workplace, criminal activity may be among the sources of the trouble.
Next week we’re going to deal with perhaps the most complicated category of trouble co-workers / leaders: drama stagers. Until then, be safe and stay strong!
