The Path to Firing Someone
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Firing team members can be a sensitive topic. I have worked in organizations that latched onto all employees, even after red flags continued to appear. I have also worked in organizations where employees were not fired, but instead simply provided no incentive to stay. Some may blame recruiting for not hiring replacement talent quickly enough. Others may blame the company's policies for making it difficult to fire someone. Some others may blame labor laws that could lead to lawsuits coming from the former employee. Regardless of the excuse, firing someone should not be the first option, but in certain situations,it is the best option. Today, I want to walk through these situations and the path to firing someone, which involves documenting performance, providing concrete feedback, and rallying decision makers. The end goal is to create a fair solution that helps both the employer and ex-employee make the best next move.
For the purposes of this article, we will only access performance based firing. Firing on the basis of conduct will be addressed in a future article.
Document Performance
Before we even begin to consider firing someone, we need to document their performance. These traceable records will be the underlying evidence when the decision to fire someone needs to be made. Performance should be documented for all individuals, not only those who are under performing. This documentation needs to occur every time a piece of work or meeting is finished. It should not wait for the formal annual or quarterly reviews. Here are metrics that we should document for all employees.
Tracking evidence to fire someone should not be an additional task. Most of these documents, if not already, should be a part of standard practices to keep track of all communications. These documents can take any time stamped written form and do not need to be formalized into reports, at least not yet. An email, a slack message, or a video recording detailing revisions are all documents that can be mapped to performance. Regardless of labor policy, company policy, or personal opinions, having proper evidence is necessary to determine if firing someone is truly the best decision.
Provide Concrete Feedback
As we continue to document performance on a regular basis and someone under performs for the first time, the initial thought that comes to mind should not be "we need to fire X person." The initial thought needs to be, "how can we improve this person?"
More often then not, if someone failed for the first time, it is because the manager or individual assigning the task did not explain it clearly enough or did not provide the right amount of guidance. So first we need to ask, was the individual given proper training? proper direction? In any case, the individual failing at a new task should be given better tools to succeed, such as learning how to apply the scientific method to excel in new territories. After equipping the appropriate tools, we need to provide concrete feedback, which is detailed below as a dichotomy.
Concrete feedback is specific and actionable, whereas non-concrete feedback is vague and not actionable. Providing concrete feedback is especially important if someone is on the verge of being fired. If non-concrete feedback is provided, we are relying on the recipient's subjective understanding of our vague comments. Therefore, if the individual makes mistakes in the future, they may place the blame on unclear or non-concrete feedback. However, if concrete feedback is provided, the results will only be tied to the individual executing and not to the feedback provided.
In the initial diagram, providing feedback can point back to documenting performance. Feedback and performance documentation can ping-pong back and forth from one another. Each time, we will continue to gauge whether our feedback had any effect on the individual. The threshold for the number of documented failure & feedback cycles resulting in firing can vary from company to company, but here are some generalizations. If the individual makes positive strides forward after receiving feedback, great. If the individual under performs in other areas, we need to continue revamp our feedback methodology to try to train. If the individual continues to under perform in the same areas after receiving concrete feedback, we need to begin considering firing as a genuine option.
Rally Decision Maker(s)
After sufficient feedback and document cycles have occurred to tip the decision in favor of firing... if the person we are looking to fire is our direct report and we are decision maker, we can go ahead and fire the person. However, in most situations, firing involves buy-in from multiple parties. The remainder of this section will address what happens if we are not the sole decision maker or if the individual does not report to us directly. At this point, we will need to rally the decision maker(s), which will involve sharing the documented evidence and feedback that we have collected thus far with said decision maker(s).
We should approach this discussion as a one on one conversation with the decision maker. Our goal is to provide facts, which we collected from the documenting performance and feedback stages, not to force a decision. After providing the facts, we can ask the decision maker for their opinion and advice. If the decision maker comes to the conclusion that firing is the best option without a nudge on our side, the decision will be firmer. Psychologically, for decisions that require persuasion, if someone draws the conclusion themselves as opposed to being told a conclusion, they are more likely to support it. If they do not come to the decision to fire the under performer after evidence has been supplied, we should continue collecting for evidence and share our opinion if they ask for it. To help illustrate, here is a sample dialogue
Us: I wanted to let you know that 'Person X' has been making careless errors, such as ___ and ___. On my end, I have tried to coach 'Person X' with concrete feedback on each occasion, but 'Person X' continues to under perform. I want to get your opinion on how to approach this situation.
To this, the decision maker(s) can have three types of responses:
Response 1: Please continue trying to coach and improve 'Person X'
Response 2: Can you collect the evidence and share it with myself and HR? We will speak with 'Person X'
Response 3: What do you think? Are you prepared to fire 'Person X'?
These three responses are provided in order of least likely to fire to most likely to fire. In response 1, the decision maker(s) is not keen on firing the individual yet. In this case, we will need to continue documenting performance and providing feedback for at least one more cycle. If the performance continues to dip, we can revisit our discussion with the decision maker(s). In response 2, the decision maker(s) wants to formally document the situation and warn to the employee, but not still not ready to fire the individual yet. In response 3, the decision maker is confirming our stance. In this case, we can provide an honest opinion, which may include firing.
If we feel that the decision maker does not trust our judgement, we need to rally individual(s) that are trusted by the decision maker to help deliver the message by going through a similar discussion as shown above. Alternatively, if the decision maker is hesitant to fire 'Person X' after multiple discussions such as the example played out, we can suggest a demotion or removing responsibilities, which should allow 'Person X' to focus on a smaller scope and ideally improve performance.
Closing Remarks
The thought of firing should arise if multiple attempts to provide feedback were met with continued under performance or a continuation of the same mistakes. An under performer who can learn has potential, but an under performer who cannot learn is dead weight. Once we realize someone is dead weight, it is in both the company and employee's best interest to remove ties. The company will find someone else. The former employee should then find another calling that is a better fit for them.
If we are to fire someone, I believe we should do so in justified manner. To take this path to firing, we need to document performance and provide concrete feedback. After several rounds of coaching the individual, if performance does not improve, we either need to fire the person ourselves or rally the decision maker(s) who can fire the individual. Firing should not be our first option, but if they cannot learn, it is the best option.
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