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Difficult People Calculator

Difficult people in your workplace can cost your business much more than you think.

This form will calculate a rough cost for you – it may be a shock.

The cost of a difficult person can include how much of your time they take up, when you could be doing other much more useful things, and the time of your colleagues. But also it can include lost sales and all kinds of other things.

We’ve tried to take a few of those into account here. Please remember this is just an estimate, and a low one at that.

We do not keep ANY of this information, We just process it through the website to give you the costs.

Does your difficult person:

  • Cause you sleepless nights?
  • Soak up your time?
  • Waste the time of others?
  • Make mistakes that cost you money?
  • Drive you mad?
  • Cause problems in other departments?
  • Spend all their time moaning instead of working?
  • Lose you sales?
  • Do things in ways that take much longer than everyone else?
  • Have no idea what problems they are causing?
  • Not respond to feedback?
  • Make life difficult for others?

If you ticked 3 or more of these boxes, your difficult person is probably costing you and your business substantially more money and effort than you realize.

Please fill in the information below and we'll calculate what your difficult person could be costing you.

 

Your Time

No. of hours (roughly) spent dealing with this person every month:
How much is an hour worth? (You need to at least double your hourly rate of pay. That's the minimum. But usually your actual added value to the company per hour is much more than that.):

Your Colleague's Time

You will have colleagues who also have dealings with this individual. I’ve just put space for three of them here. They could be other team members who have to sort out issues caused by this individual. They could be people who end up in unnecessarily long interactions with this person (e.g. meetings that go on far too long) or people who have to listen to them complaining. Or it could be people in the HR department who are trying to resolve problems, or managers of people they have upset.

Just give a rough estimate of the time each month you think has been taken up. This is the difference between what the colleague would have spent with an effective employee compared to your ‘difficult person’

No. of hours spent dealing with this person each month:
Colleague 1:
Colleague 2:
Colleague 3:

How much is each hour worth? (Estimate their hourly pay and double it for a rough cost) :
Colleague 1:
Colleague 2:
Colleague 3:

Lost Output/Performance

Many problems caused by your ‘difficult person’ will result in some kind of lost output or performance. If appropriate, put in a cost here. It may just be the cost of having to pay someone else to do it, or to fix it.

Just make a rough estimate.

Avg. Monthly cost of lost performance:

Stress

Sometimes other people will have had to take time off with stress as a result of what your ‘difficult person’ has done. This is often a big cost.

You may have had to replace that person, get a temp in, or simply manage without them and do overtime. Make a guess.

Avg. Monthly cost of your stress (time off, lost output, missed events, treatment):

Lost Business/Clients

Sometimes these people directly lose you business. One client had a receptionist who was rude to people who phoned up and didn’t take the numbers of people who phoned with enquiries. Another client had a team member who simply said that her company would not supply the service a client was asking for – it was a £1m contract.

Another did not prepare a proposal correctly so lost the sale that way. Another ran his site so badly that customers often complained and then went elsewhere.

Add those things in here.

Avg. Monthly cost of lost business:

Lost Employees

Sometimes people leave because they just can’t stand working with the ‘difficult person’. One hospital lost many of their staff in a specific department because the head of that department bullied people relentlessly.

The cost in this case was massive because, after a while, everyone knew how bad he was, so no one would work in the department. They were almost entirely staffed by contract workers at a much higher cost than employees. Over five years, this worked out at a cost of £2.6m (around $4m).

Cost of lost employees (include cost of replacing them and lost output):

How long has this been going on?

I hope it hasn’t been going on for years, but if it has, you’ll be in for a shock.

No of Months:


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