Just wanted to let you know that I've run into the exact same problem on Quickbooks Desktop Pro 2018.  I narrowed the problem to two employees, both with the last name starting with "G", that made QB unresponsive each time.  Thank God for the export employee list as an IIF file, and reimporting - somehow that has bypassed the problem for now.  I'm grateful to be back online for the moment.  If you would like my company file to test, I'm happy to provide.  

Thank you again for the export list suggestion - it saved the day (for now!)