"Removing people will always
be the hardest decision a leader faces. Anyone who 'enjoys
doing it' shouldn't be on the payroll, and neither should
anyone who 'can't do it.'"24
Jack Welch
Former CEO, General Electric
Probably the most unpleasant
part of a manager's job is firing employees. Even when a
worker deserves to be fired, most managers will feel very
uncomfortable when they break the news to them and guilty for
putting somebody on the unemployment line. It is usually
difficult to say goodbye even if you are not crazy about the
employee. I once witnessed a grizzled old veteran mutter to
himself "I need a scotch" after he had to fire several
employees. Nevertheless, keeping unproductive employees around
or delaying what is inevitable will not solve any problems. At
some point, you have to cut your losses.
REASONS FOR FIRING
UNPRODUCTIVE EMPLOYEES
Numerous problems will occur
if habitually unproductive employees are not replaced. As
previously mentioned, if you tolerate mediocre employees, then
you are tolerating giving your customers a mediocre product.
That alone should scare you into replacing poor performers.
Also, low employee morale will creep in if these employees are
kept around, because productive employees will end up
subsidizing the unproductive ones to make sure that everything
gets done. Good workers will soon become bitter because they
have to shoulder too much of the workload. If the situation
persists, you run the risk that the productive employees will
quit working hard or leave for another company.
Often times, an employee who gets fired realizes later on that
it was a blessing in disguise. It can force people to take a
hard look at their lives which can be very beneficial.
For example, Gerald is a friend of mine who had worked as an
accountant for fourteen years. Two years ago, he was fired
from his accounting firm because he was not performing
adequately. He had been employed with the company for eight
years and they gave him every chance to bounce back after his
performance began to slip. But he never managed to get himself
back on track.
The truth is Gerald never wanted to be an accountant. Because
his dad was an accountant and his grandfather was a
bookkeeper, Gerald was sort of expected to pursue accounting.
Therefore, he got a degree in accounting and later became a
CPA. The money he earned was good and his family was happy
with his career, but Gerald was never content being an
accountant. Privately, he had always dreamed of starting his
own graphic design business. Gerald had incredible artistic
talent and loved to draw and paint in his free time. It seemed
to serve as a release from what he felt was a boring
accounting job.
After Gerald was fired, he decided to use the severance pay to
start the graphic design business. After just two years, he
now has more demand for his work than he can handle. But he
loves every minute of it. Recently, he told me that getting
fired was the best thing that ever happened to him. Even
though he was a little bitter at the time, looking back on it
he knew he was not doing a good job and was not being fair to
the people he worked with. It made him re-evaluate what he
really wanted out of life and provided the kick start he
needed to make the leap.
STEPS TO TAKE BEFORE
FIRING AN EMPLOYEE
There are times when an
employee should be fired immediately. These can include when
an employee blatantly disregards authority, gets into a
physical altercation with another employee, verbally abuses a
customer, or steals from the company. In these types of cases,
the employee does not deserve another chance to correct their
behavior. However, as previously mentioned, under normal
circumstances when employees are not productive you should
first communicate to them that their behavior needs to change
and give them a chance to get better.
Unfortunately, more often than not, your efforts to improve an
unproductive employee's performance will only result in a
relatively small, short-term improvement. If you have given an
employee a sufficient opportunity to change their behavior and
they fail to do so, then you have no other choice but to
replace them. In a sense, you are letting employees fire
themselves. After having a chance to keep their job, they have
blown the opportunity. This will relieve a lot of the guilt
that you might have.
When employees are struggling, managers should also think
about whether or not they are doing work that fits their
strengths. If the employee can't succeed in their current job,
consider changing their duties or discussing with other
managers in your company if they could use the employee in
their department. Sometimes a worker just needs to be doing a
different type of work in order to be more productive.
Imagine you are playing golf and you have to choose a club for
three shots. The shots are a ten foot putt, a forty yard chip
shot, and a drive off of the tee of a par five. In your bag,
you have a driver, a pitching wedge, and a putter. Which club
are you going to use for each shot? Let's say you decide to
use the pitching wedge for the ten foot putt, the driver for
the forty yard chip shot, and the putter for the drive off of
the tee of the par five.
That would be the perfect recipe for disaster on the golf
course, because you are obviously choosing the wrong club for
each shot. The putter is designed for putts, the pitching
wedge is designed for chip shots, and the driver is designed
for long drives. The right club needs to be used to make sure
that you are giving yourself the best chance to hit a good
shot in each situation.
The same is true with the type of work you give employees. You
have to know what they are good at so you can put them in a
position where they will succeed.
For example, Dr. Don Kelleher is a research scientist at one
of the top pharmaceutical companies. He describes how he took
an employee that was not working out in another group and made
him a productive member of his group:
"One of the related research teams in our division hired a guy
a couple of years ago to work with their team. I saw some of
his work and this guy, and I do not use the term lightly, was
a borderline genius. The problem was that he was very
self-centered and tended to talk about himself a lot. It
wasn't malicious or anything, that's just the way he was.
Unfortunately, the scientists that he worked with did not like
him because of this. Plus, they had him doing work that was
well below his level and he did not like it at all since his
talent was being wasted.
"This went on for almost a year and a half before they were
finally about to fire him. When I heard that was going to
happen, I suggested that he come work for me and they were
happy to accommodate my request. I was working on three or
four projects and needed to delegate some work. So I gave him
complete control of one of them that I knew he would excel at.
Frankly, he was so good in that particular area of research
that he did a much better job than I would have. All I had to
do was give him a little bit of guidance and then let him do
his thing. He loved it because he got to do work he really
enjoyed and felt his talents were being fully utilized."
COSTS OF EMPLOYEE
TURNOVER
Even though it is a good idea
to replace unproductive employees, managers should realize
that it comes with a price tag. The following list shows how
many hidden costs there are every time an employee is
replaced.
The financial impact of employee turnover can include the cost
of:
- Advertising for the position
- Looking through resumes
- Interviewing for the position
- Background checks
- Drug tests
- Referral bonuses
- Relocation expenses
- Setting up an employee's e-mail account and passwords
for company software
- Getting a security badge
- Processing the paperwork for a departing and arriving
employee
- Training the new employee
- Lost productivity and decreased customer satisfaction
while the new employee learns the job
High turnover can also be a real strain on managers, because
it immediately translates into a larger workload. Before an
employee is hired, a fair amount of time is spent getting the
word out about the position and interviewing candidates.
However, that is usually the easy part compared to the time it
takes to train the employee in their new position. Initially,
you have to drop everything you are doing and spend enough
time with the employee to even get them up to a working level
of competency. As a result, the quality of your own work will
likely suffer because you do not have as much time to attend
to it. Even when the employee can operate reasonably well on
their own, they will still have to interrupt you with
questions that come up that have not been answered yet. And if
you cut corners by inadequately training them, then employees
will inevitably get frustrated. This will increase the
possibility that they might not stay long.
Current employees also suffer with high employee turnover.
They are usually left to pick up the slack before the position
is filled and while the new employee is being trained. When
high employee turnover is persistent, current employees are
susceptible to getting burned out. They might start to
complain to you about the increased difficulty of being able
to do their own jobs and may even leave because of it. If this
happens, your best employees are likely to leave first,
because they probably have plenty of other options. Then, you
may start to worry about keeping them which will stress you
out even more.
As you can see, high employee turnover can create a vicious
cycle and this is a problem that you can do without. This is
not to say that you want employee turnover to be zero. You
want good employees to be moving up and you also should be
replacing unproductive employees with much better ones. And if
you have the same staff for years and years, things are likely
to get a little stale. The point is the managerial duties
associated with a low level of employee turnover will likely
fit comfortably into your workload. The key is to not let
employee turnover get out of control, because when that
happens you are really going to be in trouble.
FIRING THE
EMPLOYEE
Once you have decided to fire
an employee, you should take certain steps. The most important
is to make sure you are following all employment laws and
document that you are doing so. If you don't, you will expose
yourself to lawsuits. Also, you should not go back on your
decision. The employee may plead to stay. But if their
behavior has not changed after repeated attempts to correct
it, there is no reason to think that things will be different
this time.
In addition, you should not let other employees outside of
human resources know that you are about to fire the employee.
If you do, the information has a good chance of getting back
to the employee. They should never have to hear through the
grapevine that they are about to be fired. Also, any employee
with a heart will feel terrible about being around a co-worker
who is about to be fired, even if it is deserved.
You should also treat the individual with respect. Tell them
privately that they are being fired and keep all discussions
confidential. Besides being the right thing to do, this will
make sure that the disruption to other employees is minimal.
In addition, you should remain totally calm no matter how the
employee reacts to the news of being fired.
Once the employee is gone, you should not criticize them and
rub their name into the ground. You should only express regret
that things did not work out, move on, and forget about the
past. The act of firing an employee is such a strong statement
that you have nothing to gain by pushing the issue further.
When you gracefully fire an employee, you are showing all of
your employees how much class you have. This will make them
have even more respect for you.
The final and most important step is to find a suitable
replacement. If you do not hire a good replacement, then you
will likely have to repeat the same miserable process in the
not so distant future. Even though replacing poor performers
is a good idea, it is clear that the best time to do it is
before they are even hired. When extra resources are invested
in the hiring process to get the right person for the job, a
lot of problems will be solved before they occur. For advice
on that, see Commandment #1...
CONCLUSION
Now that you have finished
the book, what should you do now? The key is to put these
ideas into practice. Obviously, this will require a lot of
work. However, the benefits of having a highly productive
workforce will make it all worthwhile.
Being a manager is one of the toughest jobs. The range of
skill the position demands at various times is immense. To be
successful, managers have to use both hard and soft approaches
depending on the particular situation. Good management
practices are not all "touchy feely." Below the surface, there
is also a hard-nosed discipline to effective managers.
Some managers are very skilled at the hard approach. They do
not tolerate slackers and have the conviction to replace
employees when absolutely necessary. However, they may not be
comfortable hearing employee suggestions or issuing
instructions in a respectful manner. On the other hand, some
managers are very skilled at the softer side of management.
They are adept at praising good work or listening to a problem
an employee has, but they may have trouble laying down the
law. Of course, not all managers clearly fit into one of these
two categories. Though, if you do, then at least you are aware
of which areas are more difficult for you so you can focus on
improving them.
Another reason the role of managing employees is so difficult
is because it can be a thankless job. A lot of good management
techniques require you to place a lot of positive attention on
your employees and take it away from yourself. Sometimes you
will just have to be happy to look in the mirror and know that
a good job has been done, regardless of whether somebody else
recognizes it or not.
Since you likely have a manager yourself, there will be times
when you will not have the power to do everything you want.
For example, you may not be able to hire who you want if the
prospective employee demands a salary that your manager
believes is too high. Even though you may be right to want to
spend a little more for your top candidate, you will have to
settle on somebody else. In addition, replacing unproductive
employees can be very difficult to do in certain situations.
However, when your choices are limited, just do the best you
can with the resources and authority you have been given. That
is all you can ever ask of
yourself.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you for taking the time
to let me share my thoughts with you. I hope your
effectiveness as a manager will improve as a result of this
book.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg
Blencoe is the author of The
Ten Commandments for Managers.
The
book got an endorsement from Daniel DiMicco, the CEO of Nucor,
which is a Fortune 500 steel company that is one of the eleven
companies featured in the best-selling book
Good
to Great
by Jim Collins. Mr. Blencoe has also published
articles and had his work mentioned in several publications
including Success,
Canadian
Business Franchise, Human Resource
Executive,
Business
Credit,
and the CEO
Refresher. In
addition, he graduated magna cum laude from the Indiana
University School of Business. He can be reached at gregblencoe@yahoo.com. 
