This article is half as good as it could be. The underlying assumption here is that you already know an employee is bad and that you need to fire them. But how do you know an employee is bad?
This is a question that no one seems to get right, unless its fairly obvious. If they stole something, no brainer. If they sexually harassed an employee, should be a no brainer. And if the company is in a financially distressed position, it may be unpleasant to fire someone, but atleast its understandable. What if the company is healthy and employee did nothing obviously wrong?
Then I guess, you look at the quality of their work. But judging quality is subjective, and you're likely to have a sliding scale depending on employee's past experience and delta to their start date. And what about periodic reviews? What about quarterly objectives? What about what other employee's think? How long do you warn an employee before you go ahead with it?
I think one of the better ways of dealing with firing is how it was handled in grad school. At my school, you had a series of qualifying examinations and you had a committee. The rules were pretty clear: 2 chances to pass and if not, goodbye. One of the tests was an oral examination in front of the committee of 5. There weren't any clear answers, but the committee would convene and in an hour they'd have a decision with lots of feedback. I failed my first attempt. But guess what? After that, I honed in on their feedback, worked my fucking ass off and passed my second attempt with flying colors.
I don't see this happening at many (or any) companies. I'm not sure why, but IMHO employers use the "at will termination" too liberally. Either that, or they let the bad employees stay far too long. Sometimes I wonder if a second chance would help bubble good employees to the top when you had previously mis-classified them as bad or vice versa. Firing scares the shit out of people...why not make this process less of a surprise than it has to be.
I've had all sorts of experiences: fired people who were good but their minds were elsewhere, fired bad people that shouldn't have been hired; I have waited too long to fire someone, and also I have kept people I intended to fire and seen them improve.
Outside of the obvious cases you cite, firing should be the end of a process, not an isolated action. As soon as you start having real doubts about the performance or fitness of an employee, have at least two meetings with them to discuss the issues and create improvement plans and actions, before resorting to firing them. Those meetings are hard to approach correctly, but not as hard as actually firing the person, so please do not wait to have them, and make the most out of them. They will not just benefit the employee (clarifying your expectations of them), but often also yourself (understanding your own mistakes as a manager).
Having been on the other side of a 'improve or leave' action, and then getting an out of cycle raise six months later. I think the most important part is simply clearly informing someone they are below expectations. Many people, myself included tend to look for the upper and lower bound of expectations. Or as a friend said, you never show up barefoot on the first day.
As soon as you start having real doubts about the performance or fitness of an employee, have at least two meetings with them to discuss the issues and create improvement plans and actions, before resorting to firing them.
Sure, as long as you understand that the need for improvement is as likely to like with management as it is with the employee. Shitty morale because of management political shenanigans, lack of engagement because nobody bothers to share the big picture or any information about what's going on, or boredom because the employee's skills aren't actually being utilized, are all management fails which can look like an employee problem. If management is going to sit with a "problem" employee, they better be prepared to look in the mirror a little as well.
While all of that is true, in my experience, quality people choose to end a relationship rather than allow others to drag them down.
I agree that that is true in the long-run, but there may be temporary circumstances where someone will bear some pain longer than they might otherwise... maybe they don't want to create a "job hopper" look on their resume, maybe they feel dedication to (some) of their colleagues, maybe it's a down economy and jobs are scarce in their market, etc. In either case, I contend that management should, ideally, be willing to accept that sometimes the required change is on their side.
That said, my experience is that poorly run companies usually don't seem to improve, and that the best option for an employee is usually to just leave, depending on any mitigating circumstances.
However, let's not overlook the fact that there are a proportion of managers who view termination as both the start and the end of the process with no conversation taking place. I think that's the "at will" part of the "at will termination" clause everyone signs. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this proportion is much larger than we might hope to think.
The role of a manager is not to determine the fire-worthiness of current employees. Putting employees in front of a firing squad on a regular basis and having "half-fired" employees working in a state of limbo would murder company morale.
Any good employee would be out the door as soon as they were handed a "second chance". They would use that chance just long enough to find a better job, if they didn't quit outright. Truly "bad" employees would likely stick around (lack of motivation to move, inability to move, spite, etc) and wreak havoc on your business.
Firing is sometimes a business decision, sometimes due to someone actually doing harm to your business but often the last in a series of management failures. It's a last resort but if you've reached that point just get it over with.
The role of a manager is not to determine the fire-worthiness of current employees
Then whose job is it?
Any good employee would be out the door as soon as they were handed a "second chance". They would use that chance just long enough to find a better job, if they didn't quit outright. Truly "bad" employees would likely stick around (lack of motivation to move, inability to move, spite, etc) and wreak havoc on your business.
That's not been true in my experience. The good employees tend to appreciate the heads up, and work with you to either fix the problem (which may be as much your problem as theirs) or move out in a productive way.
The bad ones tend to realise the jig is up and move themselves out ASAP, or rapidly foul up again giving you the evidence you need to shift them out without the decision being seen as arbitrary by the rest of the company.
My attitude at worked had declined immensely. My communication with coworkers suffered and important pieces of information from clients was lost lost on my desk.
I was given a list of behaviors of mine that were frustrating my project managers.My first reaction was flippant. But after an hour I knuckled down, read the list thoroughly, and drafted a personal action plan for each item. The next day I went onto my review, handed the 3 man management team copies of my plan, took control of the review and went through each point one by one and how I would correct it. And then, after all their concerns were addressed, I told them that they were failing me too, and gave them three actionable measurable goals for improving my career there.
It is like a marriage. There is a power balance. Each party needs to know what they want and be able to communicate it in clear actionable measurable goals.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, correcting employee behavior is a normal part of management but is not the same as saying "you may be fired if" or "improve or else". Putting an employee in a defensive state (where they're either looking for another job or trying desperately to keep their current one) is not sound management technique.
Do you really run a business where you threaten employees with termination as a form of motivation? I've built three companies and have managed, hired or fired dozens of people. Under no circumstances can I see what the OP proposed working for me.
Do you really run a business where you threaten employees with termination as a form of motivation?
Absolutely not.
Putting an employee in a defensive state (where they're either looking for another job or trying desperately to keep their current one) is not sound management technique.
Agreed.
I've built three companies and have managed, hired or fired dozens of people. Under no circumstances can I see what the OP proposed working for me.
I think we're both reading different things from the OPs post. I don't see it as threatening. I see it as transparency. Making it clear to everybody - employer and employee - how issues around continual employment are resolved.
This is not something that's introduced at the point of "I want to get rid of this person". This is something that's a part of how the company is run, and is made explicit right from the start.
This is not something that's done with the aim of firing somebody. This is something that's done with the aim of fixing the problem. Fixing the problem doesn't always mean firing the employee. That's just one outcome of many.
Perhaps it's a cultural thing.
I'm in the UK and pretty much every company I've worked for, and every one I've run, has had a structure to how employees leave a company in the same way that there's a structure to how they come on board.
The "fire you for any reason at any time" thing that seems to be the general rule in the US seems a far more scary and demotivating mechanism from my perspective.
> The "fire you for any reason at any time" thing that seems to be the general rule in the US seems a far more scary and demotivating mechanism from my perspective.
Do keep in mind that it goes both ways: employers who often exercise that right for reasons that appear arbitrary suffer from it in the long run, because even the good people aren't happy with management like that.
Good employees will do that, you are absolutely right here. As was the parent poster. I think it all depends on the current stage your emplyer is in, organisation-vise. Right at the start and for quite a long time only the bad ones will quit after the first feed-back rounds. As soon as these rounds become actual "warning shots", meaning they aren't constructive any more but turned into some behave-or-be-kicked-out process (sometimes around the same time the reasons for being warned tune from actual performance andmistakes to percieved value and personal and / or political issues) the good ones will leave. Eventualy you be stuck with a bunch of people who were to smart to be warned earlier on in the process and unable to leave in the later stage.
In this last group of people, those unable to leave are the really poor souls. I don't speak about those being to bad to find something else easily but rather those willing to leave but who either stuck for being to old, to sick, being the only employed person in the family, unable to move elsewhere for whatever reason.
The result for you as a company will be unmotivated (aka pissed) and unable workforce. Welcome to big company hell.
The Ribbonfarm articles on the Gervais Principle (a rather long 5 article series with part 6 in the making) provides stunning background on this. Thanks for the HNler to bring it to my attention and thanks to the author to formulate that good.
Firings often come down to differences in expectations. Sometimes those differences arise due to communication failures by both the manager and the employee. I don't see "second chances" as "half firings". I see it as an opportunity to reset expectations appropriately, and if there are still differences, then action must be taken.
Talking to someone about correcting their actions or improving is completely normal -- I've never managed someone who didn't respond positively to discussing their performance constructively.
Telling someone to "improve or else" is a completely different animal. If you want that employee to focus on doing their job (and improving their performance) they have to not be wasting energy looking for another job. From their perspective, moving to another job before they're fired is much better for their career (and ego) than sticking around and possibly getting fired.
I've only been in the situation once where I had to "reset expectations" and that was because the employee was not hired at will and we were hoping that person would resign (they did).
Telling someone to "improve or else" is a completely different animal. If you want that employee to focus on doing their job (and improving their performance) they have to not be wasting energy looking for another job. From their perspective, moving to another job before they're fired is much better for their career (and ego) than sticking around and possibly getting fired.
I'm not sure why you'd immediately jump to the conclusion that employees would be looking for another job. That's something which may be completely out of your control (whether they're bad, good, happy, or disgruntled at their job) so why worry about it?
You're also making this hypothetical "improve or else" conversation more negative than I see it happening. Like I said, in grad school, when I failed my quals the first time the committee gave me constructive feedback. Sure, I could have been like "fuck this" and went to a different school, but then again, I knew the rules when I signed up and I chose to honor them. I also felt like their feedback was reasonable. It was nothing personal and when 5 people agree on something, its easy to see where you came up short. I also had a chance to rebuttal if I thought their grading was wrong.
Secondly, failing my quals gave them a chance to help me. Previously I thought I knew what to do on my own, so I never bothered them with questions. Afterwards, I clearly saw the mismatch in expectations, so I pestered them until I was sure the answer they were looking for was the one I was spending my time on figuring out.
If you're envisioning a one-way "improve or else" conversation taking place, then yeah, I agree with you. But this should be a dialog where both parties are willing to admit they were in the wrong.
Many companies have a policy of stack-ranking people and tossing out the bottom percentage (ten percent, five percent, whatever) every year.
Sometimes it's clear who to get rid of. Sometimes managers are forced to throw perfectly decent workers under the bus in order to protect other workers. It sucks.
I saw that first hand, and the moral boost for the 20% that get higher than average raises -almost- offsets the fear of being in the 10% that get put on mandatory performance plan. it can be a game where you take one for the team, get on the 10% performance plan and get off it before the next review cycle. if you get put on twice in a row you are out, so at times you can game the system by trading who goes into the 10% bucket.
"Any good employee would be out the door as soon as they were handed a "second chance"."
If an employee truly is a good employee, is underperforming enough to have it formally noted, and would quit rather than step up the game once he was called out... he was already lost to the company.
It's not about under-performance. You are taking the 'boss knows best' stance which anyone who has ever held a job knows is utterly incorrect. People who manage corporations are usually very immature and have child-like sensibilities. They may decide that they simply don't like someone, that a person is the wrong race or gender, or they want to try and scare other employees. There is no second chance in office politics. Any sort of "second chance" notice indicates a loss of respect and is grounds for immediate firing of my boss. Employees should keep a resignation letter at their desk and be continuously looking for their next job unless they are absolutely sure they are not working under the typical psycopathic boss or founder.
>I don't see this happening at many (or any) companies
It's exactly how the process works in the UK, at least below executive levels. Not least because it's the easiest way to obtain the proof of incompetence required to demonstrate that the firing was done fairly.
In the UK employees don't have any right to challenge for unfair dismissal until you have been employed for one year - up to then you can be fired with little process.
Not quite - if you are dismissed for an automatically unfair reason (mostly to do with discrimination, but also some others in there like having to serve for Jury duty) then there is no qualification period.
As of April this year the limit has also increased to 2 years.
This is a question that no one seems to get right, unless its fairly obvious. If they stole something, no brainer. If they sexually harassed an employee, should be a no brainer. And if the company is in a financially distressed position, it may be unpleasant to fire someone, but atleast its understandable. What if the company is healthy and employee did nothing obviously wrong?
Then I guess, you look at the quality of their work. But judging quality is subjective, and you're likely to have a sliding scale depending on employee's past experience and delta to their start date. And what about periodic reviews? What about quarterly objectives? What about what other employee's think? How long do you warn an employee before you go ahead with it?
I think one of the better ways of dealing with firing is how it was handled in grad school. At my school, you had a series of qualifying examinations and you had a committee. The rules were pretty clear: 2 chances to pass and if not, goodbye. One of the tests was an oral examination in front of the committee of 5. There weren't any clear answers, but the committee would convene and in an hour they'd have a decision with lots of feedback. I failed my first attempt. But guess what? After that, I honed in on their feedback, worked my fucking ass off and passed my second attempt with flying colors.
I don't see this happening at many (or any) companies. I'm not sure why, but IMHO employers use the "at will termination" too liberally. Either that, or they let the bad employees stay far too long. Sometimes I wonder if a second chance would help bubble good employees to the top when you had previously mis-classified them as bad or vice versa. Firing scares the shit out of people...why not make this process less of a surprise than it has to be.