|
When to Fire An Employee
"The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live."
Flora Whittemore
You know that feeling in your stomach when something just isn't right. The employee you hired three months ago, one year ago or five years ago is not cutting it. You have tried additional training, one-on-one coaching and even the tough talk but the employee is falling short of expectations. How do you decide what to do?
Sometimes the decision to terminate an employee is easy. Most organizations have a checklist of behaviors that would call for an immediate termination like theft, fraud and fighting on the job Other serious offenses like sleeping on the job, harassing a co-worker or being negligent may encourage termination on the second offense.
But what if an employee is well behaved and even likeable but not able to perform the critical elements of their job? While there is no recipe or text book that will lay out a step-by-step set of instructions to help you make a decision with this type of employee, I believe there are six questions to ask yourself that may lead you to the right decision.
- How much time are you (or someone else) spending with this employee to bring their competency level where it needs to be?
- How much time are you willing to spend coaching this employee while neglecting your other important work?
- Is the time right to let this person go? Who do you have ready to do their work?
- Is this person in the right seat or is there a different opportunity inside your organization for this person's skills that will not be simply passing the problem?
- If you had to do it all over again, would you hire this person?
- If this person approached you today and said they were quitting, would you feel sadness because of the loss or would you have to restrain yourself from doing cartwheels down the hallway with excitement?
By asking these questions and really paying attention to how you respond, you will know what to do. Once while working as a manager of an office, my staff gave me feedback that was right on the mark. They said that they appreciated my compassion as a manager but when my compassion was over-used it became a liability. In other words, I was willing to hold onto employees in hopes of moving them to a different position, even if that position did not exist. What I realized was that compassion for your employees may mean terminating one of them so they move into a position that will offer them success and getting rid of a poor performer so my staff is not suffering.
The next step once you have decided to terminate an employee is to follow the checklist that I provided last week and to look at your hiring process to uncover the flaw(s) that allowed you to hire the wrong person.
| 
