Firing An Unproductive Employee Is Easy, But Is It The Best Route To Take?

Here is a concept many will disagree with: Any failure of a subordinate is really the failure of a manager. How did the manager fail? Why would I claim it was the manager’s responsibility?

Simple. It is the manager’s job to train, support and to not quit on an employee who is not performing as well as desired. As long as the employee is doing what was asked, following the guidelines and performing to the required standards of your company, the quality (or lack thereof) of their performance is a training issue… most of the time.

Yes, it is easy enough to say the employee flunked or did not perform well enough so you should fire him and get a new one. There are, however, a few things to consider. First, the time delay and costs associated with this decision since you now have to let the person go, advertise and hire a new employee and then train them, not really knowing how the new employee will work out until you see their performance. This is very time-consuming and wasteful, extremely expensive in terms of lost opportunity, downtime, training efforts, etc. It will probably also cost you far less to train more effectively than to fire, rehire and train again. And how do you know that the same training program previously utilized (and likely a failure in and of itself) will work any better this time?

Additionally, what message does this send to the rest of your employee base? Perhaps it is the wrong message, as such actions demonstrate lack of care and lack of effective training and lack of any loyalty from the employer. The message it sends is that anyone could be axed next, and that’s not a good morale booster. Leadership is achieved by fear or respect. I believe the latter works better.

Alternatively, with a demonstration of support, better training, extra effort and focus on bringing the employee’s skill set up to higher standards, you have shown you will not easily quit on a person. You care for your employees and will fight for their success which, in the end, is really a fight for the company’s success. This breeds employee loyalty, commitment and overall success.

This also creates an employee who will return the support by doing his best to improve his skills. Demonstration of support leading to an improved employee equals a better company, a happier workforce, more dedicated and loyal employees, higher standards for the company and a recognition that success is the product of everyone in the company as a team, not individual accomplishments with the weaker employees being weeded out and new ones hired.

Yes, it is easy to say “You failed, now leave.” It is harder to say “You are not meeting our goals; let’s see how we can support your success.” It is, however, a better and more efficient path to take. This does not mean you should just ignore low performance and wait for the employee to get better. It does mean doing something proactive to support growth and development. If you continue to do the thing that caused your employee to fail, you will only get more failure.

Now, it should be noted that if an employee does not show up for work, or is not doing the work, or is somehow violating the basic rules of the company, then the employer has a right and obligation to terminate. However, if the failure is performance-based, then retrain, train better, find the way to support success, as it pays dividends.