Firing the first – and only – employee he’d ever hired was the hardest thing Adam ever had to do.
The Toronto entrepreneur, who asked that his real name not be used, had known for several months that his employee, who he’d hired to assist with clerical work in the office, wasn’t working out the way he’d hoped. “I really noticed there were deficiencies in the performance in terms of skill set and attendance,” he says.
What he did next is just what experts recommend: He spoke to her about the deficiencies on several occasions, offered her coaching and support, and made a record of it each time.
But more than six months later, “nothing had really changed,” he says. “I realized I had to fire her.”
It’s an all too common scenario, says Toronto-based executive coach Peggy Grall, who works with executives to navigate through intense change in their workplaces, including firings.
“Many people are unprepared for this,” she says. And, she notes, small businesses usually don’t have human resources staff to deal with it.
Because firing is such a difficult thing to do, many entrepreneurs don’t want to deal with it at all, adds Cissy Pau, principal consultant at Vancouver’s Clear HR Consulting.
“They tend to avoid the issue altogether, and then things fester, and all of a sudden there’s an explosion,” says Ms. Pau.
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Firing an employee in the heat of the moment – without any documentation of poor performance or attempts to help them do better, or legal consideration – is rarely justified and can go wrong in a number of ways.
For starters, it can damage the brand. “Everyone wants their company to be considered a great place to work,” says Ms. Pau. “If you handle a firing badly it could come back to bite you,” she adds, pointing to a case in which a Kelowna, B.C., woman was fired on Facebook.
“Communicating that way may have been very normal for this company,” she says. “But from a brand perspective this will be very hard to overcome.”
Ms. Grall agrees that reputation is something to consider. If you fire without due diligence, “you’ve just sent people out to the marketplace with a really bad feeling about your company.”
Like it or not, in situations where an employee isn’t performing up to par, the onus is on the employer to try to make the situation right – and to make a record of those efforts.
“You need to be able to demonstrate that you have made every effort to get training for that person,” says Ms. Grall.
Clearly documenting attempts to correct poor performance is a non-negotiable step of the process. “I’ve seen situations where the poor performance has gone on and on and then the employer is in a tough situation,” she says. “Everyone may agree this person needs to be let go, but if you haven’t documented then you could be looking at a lawsuit.”
It’s important also to make the consequences of failing to correct poor performance crystal clear. “You need to say, ‘If you don’t meet these requirements, your job could be in jeopardy,’” says Ms. Pau, adding that employers should want employees to feel like they gave them a fair chance.
