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One of the original demotivational posters: "Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people." http://www.despair.com/demotivation.html
I think there might be an argument for firing all the happy people - something along the lines of they can only get unhappy and ruin your stats whilst at least the unhappy ones might get happier, especially after escaping from being fired.
No, probably not.
Just about every company I have ever worked for has been very hesitant to fire, and it's really detrimental to the company, its customers and its employees. The end result is usually the good employees move on. My girlfriend works for the federal government and there it's basically impossible to get fired. The end result for her is a very miserable work environment. She is actively seeking other jobs.
I can't seem to find the study at the moment, but I recall reading one that found that, indeed, never firing people can have a detrimental effect on morale, and firing long-term poor performers can improve it. However, they found that this was basically a one-time "cleanup" effect, and that attempting to make it recurring via a regular, institutionalized system of firing poor performers (e.g. based on annual performance reviews) had the opposite effect, lowering morale as everyone was constantly worried about the next review, including people who objectively had almost no chance of falling below the threshhold.
The thing he doesn't mention is that some companies can be a "6."
What I mean is that a company can seem to be a good enough fit to the prospective employee but turns out, after a period of working together, to be a poor fit from the employee's perspective. During the hiring process maybe they spotted some weak areas or got an inaccurate picture of the work culture and environment. Maybe after hiring the job is not quite what was advertised. What matters is that they decided to take the job, even though it's not an optimal fit, because the potential positives outweighed the potential negatives.
What I wonder is what's the best way to deal with this from both the employer and employee sides of the table?
I keep my resume circulating and go on interviews for a couple months after I take each new job to guard against this. It has come in handy one time in five jobs, and I made sure to let the HR director know that I left so quickly because the work I was actually doing and the co-workers I was around were completely different from what I was shown in the interview.
People say that interviewing is a two way street, but I don't think that goes quite far enough. If you get a job you're not qualified for and can't do, you'll be let go quickly. If a company gets my labor by misrepresenting what they do, I see it as fair play to let them go and let them know I don't appreciate a bait and switch.
As somebody with an intense self-interest, I have no problem quitting a job if it's just not working out for me. I'm honest with the company, and lay out exactly why it is that I'm leaving. Sometimes it's just personal fit, and sometimes there's something dysfunctional with the company. I find that people appreciate the candor and the fact that I didn't hang around and let things turn into festering negativity.
Of course, I also had one manager who just completely went off on me and threatened to tear me a new one, but that's sort of indicative of why I was leaving in the first place. :)
A really good take on "I have to look myself in the mirror" and where a business leader's responsibilities are. Taking responsibility for having the right employees in the right jobs is a way of helping customers.
I always liked the quote from Good to Great, "Start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus."
Someone (Ferriss?) once said that your success is directly proportional to how many difficult conversations you are willing to have, which is so true. Something that jumps out at me...
"How would you feel about flying on a plane with a pilot who is a “six?” What about the nurse who cares for your mother in the hospital? The mechanic who fixes the brakes on your car? The person who works for your insurance broker and is in charge of making sure your policies are renewed?"
More like "how would you feel knowing you were flying on a plane..." etc etc. There are people all around us operating as 5s or 6s, even in critical roles like the ones mentioned. It's probably closer to the norm than any of us like to imagine.
Right. Reminds me of the old joke, "what do you call the person who graduated last in med school?" Doctor.
Here's the thing about that joke: you could tell it no matter what the standards of people at medical school, and no matter what the difficulty of passing the examinations.
If medical schools are good at accepting only people who are likely to make good doctors, and at failing students who turn out not to be good enough after all, I'm not all that bothered by the prospect of being treated by someone who just barely passed. (Of course that's a big "if".)
The same goes for the OP here. How do you define that ten-point scale? If, e.g., "6" means "doing a good job, but there are other better people around" then firing your sixes may be a lousy idea: perhaps all the better people are much more expensive and you get better value from a cheaper 6; perhaps all the better people are off working for other companies; perhaps in this particular job the difference between a 6 and a 10 doesn't really matter all that much, and the cost in recruitment effort and training will outweigh the benefits of firing your 6 and getting someone better; perhaps the person currently in the job is a 6 who's working his or her ass off to turn into a 7, then an 8, then a 9, then a 10.
... Or, of course, perhaps not. The original article does specify that it's talking about people who "cannot do the job". But what sort of scale are you using where 6 means "cannot do the job"?
I think there's something badly wrong with the idea that Only The Best Will Do. Because (1) for a lot of purposes, someone who's not The Best can still be plenty good enough, and (2) there aren't enough of The Best to fill all the jobs, and (3) if enough companies start firing everyone but The Best you're left with a large number of people starving because no one is willing to employ them to do the jobs they could do perfectly adequately if employers weren't all insisting on getting The Best. Oh, and (4) guess what, these companies generally aren't keen on paying every single employee a superstar salary.
There are jobs for which you absolutely need the very best people you can get. In, for instance, a new startup, that might be all the jobs you've got. In that case, by all means insist on hiring only the best people and firing anyone who turns out not to be. But in that case, you'd better also be offering rewards commensurate to your demands.
...you could tell [that joke] no matter what the standards
of people at medical school, and no matter what the
difficulty of passing the examinations
I'm sure it isn't (and, my condolences; that must be awful for you and even worse for her) but ... would you rather she didn't have an oncologist at all? (That's what happens if you just get rid of the sixes and change nothing else.) Or that she had a seven, who's working 80-hour weeks and working like a six on account of exhaustion? (That's what happens if you geet rid of the sixes and expect everyone else to pick up the slack.) Or that she had a seven but someone else with similar problems got her six instead? (Actually, I bet you would prefer that, and I don't blame you, but it wouldn't be any improvement for society as a whole.)
Having everyone be more competent would be a wonderful thing, but that isn't something you can bring about just by firing all but the best.
Oh, we're firing her, all right, and going with an oncologist who comes highly recommended. Some kind soul like you can tolerate her incompetence.
"But what sort of scale are you using where 6 means "cannot do the job"?"
Maybe 1-5 are people who are actively harming the company?
OP complains about the "sixes" in his organization, but how would others (customers, vendors, investors, employees) rate him?
Sure, the "sixes" may be holding your company back, but just as likely, the "nines" and "tens" may be bailing because you're a "six".
OP sounds kinda like a high school jock rating girls in the hall, "She's a 6." But the analogy fails in one critical area: OP has the opportunity (and responsibility) to turn his "sixes" into "tens". That's his fucking job (if he wasn't a six himself). I've lost track of the number of times I've witnessed mediocre employees become great with a change of management.
That person with great references and potential you hired didn't suddenly turn into a "six". Something you or your organization did changed them. On the other hand, that disgruntled, under-performing employee didn't suddenly become great when the new manager restructured his job and paid attention to him.
Like most stories, this one has two sides. Unfortunately, we often only get to hear the boss's side because when things to wrong, no matter whose fault, he's the one left standing.
If the author even knows a six from a ten. I'm continually surprised how often bosses fall for con-artist employees. I don't mean ones that are just clicking along and doing the minimum; I mean employees that are actively destroying your business.
The salesman that games the incentive system or overpromises to make sales. The developer that "makes it work", but writes code so labrythine and undocumented as to make it impossible for any other developer to succeed. Or the middle manager that will sabotage other projects inside the company in order to look good in comparison.
The easy question to answer is "should you hire good employees?". The hard question to answer is "how do you determine good vs bad?" Maybe those sixes aren't trying because they're worried that any exceptional performance will be seen as a threat to a paranoid senior staff member.
For every one true 10/10 employee there are five con-artists. I'd argue the con-artists are a bigger threat than someone who's just there to punch a clock.
Hiring and firing is so very hard. I have yet to see any good techniques to do it. It is nice to see an article that owns up to the fact that even if you make them write code in the interview and have really good brain teasers and... whatever other interviewing technique, you'll still get bad apples. So many articles are written that basically say, hiring a bad employee is so very bad, you must make sure it never happens. So it's good to see discussion of what you do when it does.
This article reminds me again of how the whole job process is a lot like the process one goes through with relationships. When I saw this bit - "What would your visceral response be if they quit? Relief? I think that says it all." - I realized it would fit perfectly as a relationship advice column.
Man, this hits home... his description of a 6 is spot on. I need to let one go today.
Not sure if this is a stupid question. How do you fire people? Do you need to give them any buffer time (e.g., 1 month, just like you can give 1 month notice before resign)? How about the potential damage they could leave in that time?
I'm just curious.
Not a stupid question by any means- it's an important one!
In my case it's done based on the original contract, which provides for 30 days notice.
Then what kind of work do you ask your employee to do in the last 30 days?
Depends on the person and the circumstances of leaving. In most cases of firing or redundancy (vs. because they quit) it's safer to just pay them for the notice period but not let them to come into work anymore (severance). If they weren't that useful to begin with, you're not exactly missing out. If you're letting them go in some amicable way, it may be different, but I'd imagine you'd want to be very careful they won't do any damage.
It's safer if you terminate them immediately and just give them 30 days severance pay, which is the same thing.
I'm not sure I'd trust some people not to have a negative reaction and try to sabotage their project.
Agreed. It's easy to get worked up about paying for nothing, but the potential downside is often greater.
Out of interest, what kind of evidence/due-diligence/etc. do you need to make your case for dismissal?
Do you have issues with people attempting to sue for unfair dismissal?
There's a big difference between working with employees, something I know very little about, and working with contractors, which I have much more experience with.
In the case of a contractor, it's possible to simply end the engagement without the same burden of evidence or due diligence.
I give them a warning.
"Do x, y, z or else you're going to be fired."
It's effective because - as it just happens to turn out - nobody ever wants to be fired.
When I first started at my job I was alarmed at the number of people that were fired. Over time I have come to value managements willingness to do what they do. People in key positions come up with a target when they are hired and generally receive all the resources they need. If they do what they said they would then they stay. If not, they go.
the anti capitalistic mentality focuses on those phenomena where emotionally negative things are concentrated and the corresponding benefits are diffuse. the monkey brain can't seem to cope with the idea that the bad employee was literally hurting everyone else at the company.