Which Employee is Your Molotov Cocktail?

Potentially 5% of your workforce includes employees that are a high-security risk.

The cost of all types of fraud is a staggering 5% of turnover, per the 2014 Global Fraud Study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE.) So, what’s the cost of rogue employee behavior to your business? Simply identifying the personality type most likely to cross the line and the triggers that push them there could save you big dollars and your reputation. Or better yet, how do you help an employee to align their strengths to a given role and avoid rogue behavior altogether?

While larger businesses are investing more in cyber security and other monitoring programs, virtually nothing is being put towards identifying and monitoring costly employee behavior risks. The problem is that many of these insider threats are already in your business and the situation is gaining momentum without anyone being the wiser. The Global State of Information Security Survey 2015 recommends that 23% of the annual spend on business security should be directed to behavioral profiling and monitoring of employees.

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Research shows that the following problems are caused by human behavior:

Combinations of human behavioral factor outliers and external environmental factors (e.g. financial difficulty) trigger emotions causing negative behavior toward the company.

Combinations of employees with too similar or too different styles working in a high-risk environment cause internal control issues.

The solution is the deployment of a validated personality discovery process, providing insights to hidden, hard-wired traits and a reliable prediction of where security or compliance risks exist. Based on external research, employees with the following measurable behavioral traits are more likely to engage in rogue behavior when emotionally triggered:

Innovative – bright mind, which turns into curious and devious thinking

Ambitious – desire for success, leading to cutting corners

Secretive – working under cover and not revealing key information

The reality is that any person with a weak or temporarily broken character in the wrong team or facing external pressure can make flawed decisions and therefore, become the source of costly negative behavior. The employee behavior review using personality assessment methodologies should be uniformly applied to every employee in the business from the top down to distill the “hot spot” areas. The high performing leaders down through the sales and operations teams to the disgruntled bookkeeper are not exempt – New hires, or old guard, every last one. You only have to look at the recent headlines regarding Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, and JP Morgan. I am regularly seeing it in the financial services industry and the privately held businesses with whom we partner.

Using behavioral insights, management can dynamically match employees with specific environmental conditions to determine their potential response. They can also discern the degree to which such responses could create rogue behavior and negative actions towards the business. Lastly, management can apply these insights towards talent re-allocation, employee evaluation, team development and improved hiring processes.