6-30-10 Am I Fired?

I managed to totally space-out about making a blog entry on Monday. If I were a “paid employee”, I’d probably be fired by now. Or would I?

It seems that most companies rarely fire people -- except in extreme circumstances. If a person doesn’t perform, they typically just get shoved off into a corner.

I know that I’ve said in the past that sometimes you have to clean out the dead wood (4-19-10 Cleaning Out the Dead Wood). But my musings about whether or not I should be fired from the blogging world got me to thinking about the responsibilities of the executive relative to people who don’t perform.

As an executive, your job is to create an environment where your people can accomplish the work assigned to them. There will be times when one or more of your employees don’t meet your performance expectations. And for at least a couple of your employees, it is likely that it will happen time and again.

So what do you do? Well, if I were a good HR person, I would tell you to document the heck out of each situation. And you know, that isn’t bad advice, because if at some point you do have to fire the employee, you will need that documentation.

But beyond the proscribed HR answer, what else can you do?

As I said above, you have to create a successful environment. That means figuring out the unique environment that will allow your non-performing employee to perform successfully. And that does not include pawning this employee off on some other executive or organization.

As the executive (and the boss), your job is to figure it out. Here are some things to ponder as you are working on this. Is the employee struggling with specific tasks? Is it a communication issue? Is it an education or training issue? Is it attitude? There are, frankly, an endless number of possibilities here.

Once you narrow down the possibilities/issues, then it is time to talk to your employee. You need to make your expectations very clear, being very specific about performance issues. And then you need to talk about options for the employee (and I‘m NOT talking about the threat of job loss). Show the person that you have given this a great deal of thought and analysis ---- and have some ideas. Then listen. And listen some more. Let your employee talk through the anger and frustration that he/she likely has. At some point, it will likely come to be a collaborative session between the two of you.

One other thing. You will probably have to do it more than once. Huh? Yeah, I really mean that. Think about it. When you were deciding on a career, did you end up doing today what you started out doing? Likely not. So be prepared that the first attempt by you and your employee to get this right will not always work. Patience…….

Cheers!