How to Fire Someone With Dignity

How do you fire someone with dignity? Let's first talk about the Bozo Explosion. It's what Steve Jobs described when they had to hire real managers to run Apple during their early explosive growth phases. He said, when we would hire a B-player, we found that B-players B players would only hire other B and C players. They would never hire an A because they were scared that A was going to make them look bad. And so they wound up with a team full of Bs and Cs, hence the bozo explosion. We see a lot of this with our clients where they're afraid to terminate employees who are a bad fit for the organization. And conversely, the organization is a bad fit for them. Now on the other side, we also see a lot of employers that want to fire employees for for all the wrong reasons. I just got a call last week from an employer who wanted to fire one of their employees. He said, "Matt, help me draw up the paperwork. I'm getting ready to fire Susie and I want to do it on Friday." Okay, great. I'd be happy to help. Walk me through that situation. What has she done? He listed all the things wrong with her performance and all the things she's done wrong over the last 6 months. I said, that's great. Have you had a conversation with her about these things? Have you sat down and followed a progressive disciplinary action plan with her? Well, yeah, she's, she's aware of it. But have you sat down with her and communicated with her that her performance is not up to par and that the next step could be termination? Well, no, we've never done that. Well, just hold your horses right there. A termination should never ever be a surprise for the employee. When you sit down with someone, they should know that there is the possibility that they get terminated based on the actions you've taken up to that point to let them know that their performance is not up to snuff. That's just one of the things that you can do to prepare yourself to terminate an employee with dignity. We're going to walk through the 3 steps you can take to protect you and the organization from that bad employee becoming an even worse ex-employee. Thanks for joining us today. Matt, this is a right-to-work state. I don't need a reason to fire somebody. I can fire anybody I want whenever I want. You are right. It is a right-to-work state, but it also is a right-to-sue state, and wrongful termination cases are on the rise. They're expensive and they take a ton of time for small business owners. You want to make sure you're protected prior to terminating anybody from your team. The first step, as I alluded to earlier, is you want to eliminate surprises. Following a course progressive discipline, where you're documenting conversations of poor performance over time, is a great way to not only help employees improve their performance and understand what the expectations are in the role, but also prepare for the worst should you reach the situation at some point where you do need to terminate the employee. It's a great best practice, and it also creates a culture of feedback inside of an organization. After you sat down month over month with employees and discuss things they can improve on and things that they're doing great. It provides you with a great culture of feedback that allows people to be open and be heard on both sides of the fence and operate at a very high level. Make sure you document these conversations and have employees sign off on documentation as well, even if they don't necessarily agree with what was discussed in the conversation. Document, document, and eliminate surprises. The next thing you want to do is when you do reach the point where you are certain you're going to fire the employee, you followed that progressive discipline and you're setting the meeting to sit down with the employee to terminate employment, make sure you come fully prepared. So that means having a concise reason why the employee is terminated and being able to communicate that clearly. Having any benefits information and contact information related to COBRA as the employee is offboarding. It's always the best practice to have the final paycheck in hand as well. That way you can allow the employee to leave without any loose ends. And make sure that you're aware and conscious of the setting and environment that you're creating. Go to a private place where somebody's not going to have to walk out of the office into a room full of their former employees with tears streaming down their face, do it with dignity. Do it the same way you would want it to be done to you if the table was turned. Have empathy during situations like this and make sure that you're giving the employee the opportunity to get anything off their chest that they need to, as long as they're being respectful. This is really important to give them a sense of closure as they're on their way out the door so that they don't feel like they still have things left to say to you after they In fact, this is when somebody could try to come back and hurt the organization because they felt like they weren't heard and they had no closure in the opportunity. And now on your side of the desk, once you've said what you need to say and you've been concise about it, this meeting should last no more than 15 minutes. You just need to shut up. That is the biggest piece of advice I give to most executives going into a termination meeting is when the meeting is done and when you've said what you need to say that you already have pre-scripted, Shut up. Don't get drawn into an emotional conversation that can come back to haunt you on later on down the road. So make sure that you walk in very prepared and you know when to zip it. Now finally, make sure you do this with dignity. Have that empathy. Understand that while this probably kept you up the night before and it's been a really difficult decision for you to make, you are about to turn somebody else's upside down, take away a stream of income, possibly to their family, and also put them in a situation they might not have necessarily seen coming. And so make sure that you're doing it with dignity, you're being conscious, and you're empathizing with the person on the other side of the table and understanding the burden that they're now going to be faced with in finding a new job. Don't let that get in your way of performing the process or leaving any loose ends. However, you want to make sure that that you treat this person with a high level of integrity and you have a conversation that's beneficial to them. And sometimes it even makes sense to help them find the right fit for that, for their role after the fact. After all, you know what they're good at. Maybe you can connect them with some other people inside your network that can help them out. I often recommend doing this through another channel so that you don't keep yourself too tied to an employee that you've recently terminated. You can maybe have somebody else on your staff coordinate with them to plug them into another organization or community that can help them better. So do the right thing by the employee when you let them go. Make sure that you treat them fairly and you treat them right and you understand how difficult and challenging it is for them on the other side of the table. Well, that's it for today. Make sure that you are prepared for your conversation. It's never a surprise to the employee and you treat them with an immense amount of dignity on their way out the door, and you should be able to protect yourself from wrongful termination suits down the road and from having people out there badmouthing your employment brand after they leave your organization. Make sure you follow us on Twitter @ergpayroll.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and check us out at ergpayroll.com. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve a lot of you out there, and we look forward to earning the business of the next one that comes around. Thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to you joining us next time. Check out our videos every month at ERG Payroll.