By Kyle Eastham
Just My E-pinion
Given a choice of using the carrot or the stick in their organizations, many guest columnists favor the carrot. Today’s says we need more stick … or, since he’s known as “the Black Belt Speaker,” perhaps more kick.
Canned. Fired. Terminated. Bounced. Let go. Drummed out.
Whatever term you use, you need to use it more often.
By keeping employees that are routinely rude, violate policy, use company time and equipment for personal gain, or simply don’t do their jobs, you are doing a huge disservice to the public, the stockholders, and to the other employees in your company.
The public deals with such employees and assumes that your entire company acts the same way—and that you, as a manager, condone the behavior. Good luck with your public relations.
Your other employees know the person is a loser. But they see him or her getting the same pay raises as everyone else. They start saying things like, “I can’t believe they let him get away with that stuff,” or “If I tried that, I’d get a 3-day suspension.” But that talk soon turns to, “You know, they better not say anything to me. They let ____ get by with a lot worse, and nothing ever happened to her.” When you finally do take disciplinary action, you have problems because you’ve established a precedent with how you deal with (or fail to deal with) certain types of behavior.
Frank was excited to get his promotion, but during his orientation, there were signs that made management question their decision to promote him. He routinely showed up late. His attire wasn’t appropriate. He argued with the training staff. Before his probation ended, the decision was made to terminate him. Even though there was no blatant incident, the division chief wisely decided that if Frank’s behavior was marginal during probation, it would likely stay that way or deteriorate after he was removed from probationary status.
Many business leaders will tell you they never regretted the decision to fire someone—only the decision not to.
“What’s he/she done now?”
I’m not talking about firing over an isolated incident where a good employee argues with a vendor or fails to turn in a report on time. You spend a lot of time and money recruiting and hiring good people. There are costs for recruiting, interviews, behavioral tests, background investigations, maybe polygraphs and drug tests. It’s tough to start that process over again.
I’m talking about the employee who continually screws up, a person who shows a pattern of poor decisions, poor judgment. It’s the guy (or gal) who, when their name is brought up, makes you roll your eyes, sigh heavily, and ask, “What’s he/she done now?”
Virtually every manager, every shift supervisor—for that matter, every employee—knows someone in the department who shouldn’t be there … a slacker, a hothead, or someone who can’t be trusted to act in the best interest of the company.
Nobody likes to be the bad guy. But, as manager, there are times when you are obliged to be that bad guy, or you’re not doing your job. If you’re a first line supervisor, you have to hold your people accountable. As an upper or mid-level manager, you have to hold those line supervisors’ feet to the fire. If they’re not taking care of small issues before it becomes a termination issue, remind them of their responsibilities—and the fact that intervention now could save someone’s career by heading off a huge problem later.
I know it’s hard. You have to deal with employment contracts, the union, supervisors who won’t write an honest performance evaluation on their employees, internal politics. But that’s what supervisors do. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do.
It may take a while, and it may be a battle. Even a battle you could lose in court. But will you do the easy thing … or the right thing?
Kyle Eastham is a professional speaker, judo instructor, and former HR manager who teaches peak, or “Black Belt” performance. Contact him at Kyle@BlackBeltSpeaker.com or (405) 201-1350.
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