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Does firing = administrative failure?
Z recently acquired a new job and immediately found herself in charge of several employees who were not prepared for the work she required of them. Her boss, the company owner, was already fixing to fire two of them and was asking for her to name them so that they could get rid of them quickly and rebuild as soon as possible. In her nightly discussions with me, I focused on giving her advice on which ones she should select to get rid of.
This process went on for a while and she eventually was able to utilize her employees to a useful degree. She informed her boss that she did not want to fire any of them and he was very proud of her. He told her, "If we fire someone, it means we've failed." This humbled me, because I was sitting in the background, thinking that I was giving out some good, sound advice.. and I instantly saw the other side of the story.
So the question is... is reform the responsibility of the institution or the member?
I have an employee who was recently hired. He was doing as well as one could have expected in the circumstances we hired him in, but after a week he began to plateau when he should have been accelerating. My boss and I teamed up to send him a message that he was a very vital part of the team and that he needed to step up. We instantly saw results... even though we had to shoulder some of his work ourselves. The point is that we took a different approach with this guy and it paid off.
Do we really need to get rid of the people who aren't performing?
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