Are we too generous in hiring and keeping employees?

Comments

4 responses to “Are we too generous in hiring and keeping employees?”

1. 

   4 June 10

   Josh Walawender

   Hi Scott, I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and find it very helpful. I’m an academic who has been thrust (unofficially) in to a project management role, so it is particularly apropos for me. I have to question one of your statements on this post though:

   “When employees see new hires with poor performance being kept on, they lost respect for managers (and HR) and lose motivation to perform at their best …”

   What’s the basis for that idea? It goes against my instincts. I’ve no training in this, so this might be management 101 level material that I’m missing.

   From my own perspective, if a new hire is struggling and the manager is backing them up and trying to help them succeed, that would improve my morale to see. If I see another employee (even a new one) treated as a commodity and fired if they aren’t the optimal part for that piece of the machine, that has negative effects on my morale. I start to think that I shouldn’t go out of my way to perform at my best if all I am is a cog in a machine, I should perform well enough to not get fired and that’s it.

   This worry about the lost respect for managers strikes me as being a very … manager-centric view. The underlying idea seems to be that as a manager, “when I look good, the employees are happy and productive.”

   As an employee, I would think that’s backwards. It should be: “When the employees are happy and productive, the manager looks good.”

   Perhaps I’m missing the point, I won’t argue that a hire which is a complete disaster is clearly not good for the organization, but in my mind, someone who is “underperforming” isn’t at that level.
2. 

   4 June 10

   Scot

   Hi Josh,

   Thanks very much for the comment. And I agree with you, but did not make my point very clearly. What I should have said is not “when an underperforming employee is kept on, everyone else loses motivation and morale”, but “when nothing is done about an underperforming employee, everyone else loses motivation and morale.” I didn’t mean to imply, although I did, that all poor performing employees should be dismissed, but that their performance should be addressed. My mindset assumed that efforts to work with the employee to improve performance have been tried and failed, or that the employee is such an obvious mismatch to the position/organization that further attempts at bringing the employee up to speed are not likely useful.

   I had been thinking of several people I have worked with who were continually causing the organization problems, but whom nobody ever properly dealt with – either to explain to them that what they were doing was not helpful to them or the organization, or to re-assign them to where they better, or remove them from the organization entirely. In these cases, when everyone sees a problem that is not being dealt with, the loss of respect and morale I discussed is obvious.

   You are correct in pointing out that when an underperforming employee, through proper coaching and mentoring, evolves to become a high performer, there is a gain in respect and morale. This is obviously the better approach than dismissal. But when these efforts have been tried, and there are still obvious problems (most every organization has one or two people like this), not doing something more severe (like re-assignment or dismissal) rapidly kills morale and involvement. Thanks for pointing out my oversimplification and unclear context above.

   scot
3. 

   5 June 10

   Paul

   Scot,

   Interesting article. My perception is that there two secondary factors at play that contribute to this problem that you didn’t explicitly mention:

   1) There’s often pressure on the recruitment panel to fill the position, even if none of the candidates come over as a really good fit. My experience is that people that were hired as “the best of a bad bunch” (if you’ll forgive the blunt expression), or alternatively as “the only applicant that’s actually qualified, so we don’t have any choice anyway” are less likely to work out. I’m not suggesting an r=1 correlation here – sometimes someone comes over great an interview and doesn’t work out, sometimes you reluctantly take what you’ve got and they turn out great, but I do think recruitment panels would do well in such situations to have a frank discussion about whether they actually should fill the position or not. Of course if the position being empty places hardship on the other team members, it can be very difficult to justify not taking a somewhat qualified applicant.

   2) It seems to me that there’s a general perception, especially in academia, that it’s very difficult to fire or otherwise get rid of someone from a job. As a manager, I’ve been sent on courses that explain things like how you go about firing someone for unacceptable behavior (harassment etc), and the party is line is a series of verbal and written warnings, documenting what they did each time and having them sign something to say they acknowledge being told not to do that. Given all the documentation you’re supposed to keep (of specific, dismissal type offenses) to defend your position if they argue that they’re being dismissed unfairly or whatever, it’s difficult to see how one would create such a water tight case for someone who just “wasn’t really working out”.
   Of course, it’s generally a good thing that firing people on a whim is discouraged, but I’d certainly be interested to know the perspective from a legal / HR viewpoint of how difficult it would be and how one would go about getting rid of someone in that situation.

   Cheers,
   Paul.
4. 

   5 June 10

   Scot

   Hi Paul,

   First, I agree there are about a billion ways to hire the wrong person and far fewer ways to hire the right person. Hiring the “best of the bunch” is certainly not one of the latter!

   i also agree that academia’s documentation requirements can make it difficult to fire someone, but with lawsuits so prevalent everywhere, I don’t think this situation is unique to academia. I think some keys are to use the probation period aggressively – prolonging it, if necessary. Another is to keep up with the documentation and honest performance appraisals. A record of good (or at least not BAD) reviews, often made to avoid conflict, can cast serious doubt on the motivations and results of later bad reviews, once people actually do start building up the needed documentation.

   scot