Halx

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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MSD

It depends. My former boss was given 7 years of chances to make even a slight improvement and never managed more than "needs improvement" on his performance reviews. He was also an alcoholic and I think he sincerely believed he was doing an acceptable job while the place fell apart.

If they hadn't gotten rid of him, I'd be job hunting right now instead of doing his job.

ItWasMe

I think that firing can mean administrative failure if:
you did not provide adequate training, or you did not make yourself clear as to what their duties are.
you managed to hire someone who really was not qualified.
you were so giddy to hire a qualified person, you overlooked obvious personality clashes that would happen.
you changed software/hardware/other job requirements years later, without providing adequate REtraining.

If the person not performing does not know what is expected of them, if they believe that they are doing what it expected of them, then they should not be cut immediately.

If an employee is lazy or confrontational...well it can still be considered an admin failure for not seeing it before the hire. But hey, sometimes you have to cut your losses (like MSD's boss in above post).

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laconic1

I have a hard time answering this. It can be an administrative failure if the employer does not provide adequate training, or if they do not recognize abilities that an employee has that can be utilized to expand the employees role and challenge the employee. Yet if an employee simply gives up instead of trying to improve or working with the cards they are dealt then it is not an administrative failure.

Nimetic

I think that it is a failure - in many cases.

The employee is in charge of initial selection and normally has a probationary period (in many roles). Then they have the chance to use carrots and sticks to a limited extent as well as training.

There's always going to be some better hires and some worse ones - however to fire somebody does seem extreme to me. At least in a larger organization where there should be a range of roles suitable to the non-spectacular performers.

eribrav

I'm baffled as to how you could evaluate a new employee after just a week. I work in a very different field (medicine) and if our new hires manage to do anything useful at all the first week, without causing any major distractions we're really psyched.

On the other hand, our hospital's corporate culture is one where middle management mediocrity and even general ineptitude seem to be tolerated, and the same mediocre folks spend decades accomplishing very little. Maybe we DO need to re-look at some things.

Excellent and interesting topic BTW.

MiSo

well, for starters, it is in the interest of the workplace to hire qualified people.
that's why there's the interview process.

after being hired, its the company's job to train the new hires well and get them motivated to do a great job.

A great manager should be able to bring the most out of the staff to produce fantastic results. now if a team member decides that they do not want to "swim with the current" so to speak, then i wouldn't just write off the person, but try to make them understand why things are done a certain way. if they're unwilling to change then thats where the company should decide to part ways with the individual.

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Halx

Granted, that was a week AFTER his training period had ended. We told him that we expect him to adapt very quickly.

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The_Jazz

There is a big difference between the for-profit and non-profit world. I have a lot of friends who work for non-profits. If you are fired there, you almost certainly suck as a human being. There's a distinction, though, between being laid off and fired.

I will never fire someone in the for-profit world. I just don't believe in it. It does mean that I failed as an administrator and, more importantly, a motivator. If you can't do the job, then you can't be here, pure and simple. The few times that has happened (I'm a pretty good interviewer) I have found people other opportunities. It's a small world, and people that are fired invariably remember the incident with bad feelings. I would prefer not to be bad-mouthed by someone or have someone decide that they're out to "get me". If I can find them another job that pays about the same with less stress, they usually see it as a favor and that now they owe me. I've placed failed assistants at clients, with underwriters and (in a case of supreme incompetence) with a finance company. They're still in the industry, and they all think that I'm a good guy that just wanted to help them. In reality, they were in my way.

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ratbastid

I think firing should be a last resort, obviously. Ever possible effort needs to have been made to bring the person up to speed.

Look, the "IS" of the question isn't real useful. The "who's to blame"ness of it doesn't move the organization forward. Blame never does, actually. I'd rather recast the question into a "productive way to look at it". One productive way to look at firing is, it's an opportunity for the organization to assess what went wrong in the selection and training of that person, to learn from those mistakes, and to have that less likely to ever happen again. Thinking about firing that way allows the manager and the organization to learn the most from the situation, regardless of whose "fault" it was or what "should" have happened.

In the company I used to work for, I had four developers who were brilliant and amazing and highly productive, one who would spend days at a time navel-gazing about design patterns and code tests, and one who didn't really seem to understand quite what we were doing. I wasn't part of hiring that last one--I was out of town at the time, and I think my boss felt like we needed another warm body, and liked the idea of hiring a black woman. She never really "got" the work we did, she was slow to deliver, and what she delivered rarely satisfied all the specifications. And I can say, given my immaturity as a manager at the time, that I never really did what I could have to turn her around. I gritted my teeth, recoded some of her work, apologized to customers, and went on with my day.

As the company went down the tubes (post-bubble, web development shops were hit hard, and we were no exception), and my boss and I put in order the priority for keeping people. Navel-gazer was first to go, then a REALLY solid developer who had been hired only a couple weeks earlier. I asked about my problem child, and my boss said, "I just can't fire a black woman." Sigh. He's a good guy, but is social conscience was at odds with his business sense.

Point is, I can say her inability to produce was her fault, but that doesn't develop me as a manager. If I take responsibility for it, I can see clearly the things I need to put in place to make sure my people hit the ground running and stay running.

Jinn

I think this question could be heavily influenced by the "collar-dness" of the place you're working. I'd venture to say that MOST of TFP works in white-collar jobs, where people tend to have a higher (or advanced) education, and who live in the middle to middle-high classes and have things like children, spouses and mortgages to pay for. In those cases, the person is intrinsically motivated to keep going to work and do enough at work to get paid.

In "blue collar" jobs, you have a lot of high-school dropouts with drug habits and POs following them around. No amount of "administrative" pressure can turn a person who has chosen this lifestyle into a highly-productive and motivated employee who is concerned for the success of the company.

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highthief

Wow, I think that's a bit nutty.

You think because someone dropped out of high school at 17 then at 35 he/she might not be a different person, in a different situation, etc?

You think white collar people are more motivated to work hard?

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Jinn

Yes.

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ngdawg

This is one of the most bigoted narrow-minded things I've ever read.
I am married to blue collar, a sister to blue collar, a friend to blue collar and surrounded by blue collar people most days of my life and I can assure you, Sir, that not one is a drop-out, druggie, drunk, criminal or miscreant of any kind.
Some have college educations, some high school diplomas; their pay rivals that of many higher-education backed careers and their loyalty or lack thereof to the people they work for is not dependent on how much education they have.
/end rant

To the OP:
Failings are not wholly dependent on one or the other, but rather on the "fit" of person to person and person to company.
A friend of mine landed what he thought was the dream job he'd been waiting for, only to be fired a year later after months of going head to head with his superior.
This boss of his had no experience or education in the field for which he was made manager-IT security, network maintenance and development. He had a degree in Math.
Before the friend was fired, he discovered a few things about where he was working:
1) The previous person at that desk walked out after only 3 months and never came back.
2) The person previous to that one was also unceremoniously fired after one year.
3) His manager was a personal friend of some higher-ups.

When I first got this job a year ago, I was, after only two months, thisclose to being fired. It had nothing to do with my performance, per se, but rather the lack of mutual understanding between my boss and myself. In short, I was getting on her nerves with my work style.
Even now, one year later, we still get on each other's nerves-she's a panicker, I work better under pressure. She's a perfectionist that can not bring herself to waiver from old ways-I am a "whatever works this time around" person.

How people mesh within a given unit is every bit as important as how well a job is done. If there is even a hint of malcontent for any reason, the task will falter and when the task falters, it lands on the shoulders of the person doing the task. Hence, that person appears less than desirable as a keeper.
I do think it's management's job to be very clear on what is expected, and the employee's responsibility to be honest about what he/she can handle.

shakran

collar really, I think, has little to do with it. There are morons in all walks of life.

I think the original question really is not answerable in a hard-and-fast rule. Sometimes people get fired that could be turned into model employees if the administration was a little better. Other times they get fired because no matter what people do to try to put them on the right path, they just insist on failure.

At a station I worked at way back in the days of steam-powered television, we had a reporter who could never meet her deadline, could not learn how to interview people, and would therefore skip important questions and only realize when she was writing that the question needed to have been asked, at which point she would then assume (read: make up) what the answer to the question would have been, any time she had to go live was a guaranteed embarrassing disaster. We worked with her. I went in the field with her for a month straight trying to show her how to do this job, and she Just. Couldn't. Get it. So finally, we fired her. That wasn't a failure of management. That was a failure of her.

Long story short - Halx gave an example of failure of management - here's an example of failure of employee. . . there is no hard and fast rule.

girldetective

What?

Its been some time since Ive read such a negative judgement of human beings in general.

Its discouraging to me that its been written, and has changed the flavor of this thread for me. What began as interesting and humane, has led to this sour taste.

beh.

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jorgelito

No one owes you a job. Do it right, get it done or get out. Firing means you, the firee has failed. Unless of course, the management is to blame. But generally speaking, people do not, or should not be fired willy nilly without cause even though most jobs are at will. One example is Isiah Thomas. He should have been fired long ago, but instead, he is sill around making a mockery of the company he represents.

This wussification of America where we have to coddle everyone is just insane and continues our decline in competitiveness.

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shesus

It seems that people have gotten more in touch with their feelings in the past several years. This makes everything personal, even when it isn't. If someone is fired because they are doing an inadequate job, that has nothing to do with the person doing the firing.

There are situations where administration does drop the ball and examples have been mentioned in this thread (poor decision-making during interviews, lack of training/materials, personality clashes, etc).

I think it's a case by case situation which needs to be looked at it objectively.

This has stuck with me all day. I find this very manipulative and a negative use of power. The fact that you helped them get a job is nice. What I see as a problem is that you feel you have entitlement about doing them a 'favor'. They might think you're a nice guy, but it's under false pretenses.

I would prefer to be told straight out why I was being let go or moved to a different position so there would be an opportunity for self-improvement. I don't see it as a favor to pass people along without any idea that they were incompetent.

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