I've been in human resources for many years.  Terminations have been hard for me.  I wonder if you could discuss this issue in one of your columns.  I feel a sense of failure when this is the outcome with any employee.  Here's a recent example.  We decided to terminate an employee with 11 years of service.  The back-story is that as her department has restructured over the past few years, she'd been reluctant to embrace the changes.  Her supervisor held a number of team building sessions during which the employee was a passive participant.  Her work output was only minimally acceptable.  She'd also become a difficult employee because she was moping and angry.  Her co-workers complained about how they "worked around her" in order to get things done. 

 

Our company is emphasizing process improvement and cooperation.  We are challenging people in new ways.  Some of them don't like it.  The old guard has the mindset that things weren't broken, so why are we trying to fix them?  This employee represented that mindset.  She'd even been a spokesperson of sorts for that mindset.  Now the story I'm hearing is that we fired her because she didn't tow the party line.  That isn't true - we fired her because she wasn't doing her job and was apparently not interested in moving forward.  The hard part is that she is a single mom and we'd had many private conversations in which she'd confided in me.  I like her and feel for her.  Long story short, I feel guilty.  What do you say?

 

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