No matter how many times I might offer suggestions, train managers, or talk about it, there will always be a few of you that are not properly dealing with your bad employees. Why is that?

The most common reasons were compiled by the CNN.com staff. After reading what they put together, I have to agree with most of them. Listed below are the ones I've seen most often:

1. The employee brings more value to the company than s/he costs. I've seen this in companies where the technological knowledge of the company is connected to this employee. Prevent becoming too reliant on one employee by ensuring every employee keeps accurate and consistent logs of their work. While you may be reluctant to fire that employee, you need a backup plan for any type of "what if" that would prevent the employee from returning to work.
    
2. The boss is afraid of the employee. You can laugh but some employees can be downright scary! You hire someone who, at first, is great because they are proactive and take charge of their job. Unfortunately, over time they also take over the whole office and appear to be telling everyone else what they should be doing. Pretty soon, you're afraid of the repercussions of disciplining or firing the employee.
   
   If you're already in this position, call in professional help (an experienced HR consultant or employment law attorney) who will help you work through this. If you want to prevent this from happening to you, do your job as a manager and counsel your employees as events occur. The longer you let things go, the worse it will get.
   
3. S/he is not really a bad employee. Usually this means the employee may really intend to do a good job or be a good employee but just can't get it together. Maybe they do a fabulous job when they are working but are consistently late to work, absent, or a number of other things that you wouldn't normally put up with if they didn't do such good work.
   
   The only viable solution here is to determine your policies and make sure all your employees, including the best and worst, follow them. As soon as you make allowances for one employee, others will soon expect special allowances too.

Do you see yourself in these examples? Deal with it. Don't try to justify your actions to date, just change your behavior and take charge. You'll love the difference it makes with the rest of your employees.