I’m going to share with you three examples of bad employees experienced by businesses I work with. For each story, I would like you to consider how you would manage these situations.
Small Business #1:
The first example involves an employee who was hired, groomed and eventually promoted to the position of general manager before being moved to a new city as part of a strategic expansion. About five years ago, however, both, the owner and the vice president of this company began to realize this general manager wasn’t a good fit for the job.
That loss of confidence came about as a trend of high employee turnover began to emerge, especially since several employees made it clear in their exit interviews that the general manager was the reason they were leaving. Vendors also began to refuse to work with this manager. Even customers complained about his arrogant attitude.
For the next five years, the situation continued to deteriorate. This manager’s poor work performance resulted in significant cost overruns, broken business relationships with their vendors, an ineffective team of employees and unhappy customers. Growth in this city fell far below expectations, slowing to a turtle’s pace even as business in other cities thrived under more suitable general managers. Altogether, this particular manager was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars each year.
Throughout those five years, the owner and the vice president tried to convince this general manager that he was not the right person for the job, hoping that he would figure it out himself and leave of his own volition. Instead of being direct and telling him that things weren’t working out, they allowed their company to suffer.
If you were responsible for this employee, would you have handled it the same way? If not, what would you do differently?
Small Business #2:
Recently, one of my clients texted me that she wasn’t going to be available for a scheduled phone call because she was in a hospital emergency room. Over her 20+ years working as a chief financial officer (CFO), she continued to place an incredible amount of responsibility (and pressure) upon herself to ensure the company’s accounting information was consistently flowing, accurate and timely as the company’s assets grew by 4,000%.
During these 20 years of growth, the CFO only hired two additional staff members despite complaining that she is terribly overworked. The strain of growing demands and responsibilities were pushing her to the point of incurring physical breakdowns, resulting in her trips to the hospital.
Her company, however, has never prevented her from hiring more staff; she also feels she has the correct amount of staff to meet their day-to-day demands. But one problem was having a significant impact on her: an employee who constantly erred in his work throughout his 15 years with company. During that time, the CFO made it clear to this employee that these mistakes needed to stop. Unfortunately, the errors continued and the work was only ever 80 - 90% accurate.
Yet even after many discussions with this employee about his inaccurate work, the employee remained as part of the CFO’s team. Instead, the CFO concluded that she would simply have to double-check all of his work, adding significantly to her workload.
If you were managing an employee who failed to fix problems with their work, how would you manage the situation?
Small Business #3:
The owners of yet another company shared a story with me about the work expenses of one of their salesmen. This individual used his company credit card to pay for what he claimed was a lunch meeting with a customer. But when the owner reviewed this particular expense claim, she noticed that the “lunch” receipt had a time stamp of around 9 pm.
The owner’s husband also happened to know the customer in question and contacted him, discovering that the customer had never even had lunch - or any other meal - with this particular salesperson.
The next day, the owner asked the salesman about the lunch receipt. The employee’s excuse was that his personal credit card resembled his business credit card, causing him to accidentally use the wrong one. When the owner probed further and asked why this expense was submitted as a work lunch with a customer he had never shared a meal with, the salesman just stared at the ground in awkward silence.
When the husband of the owner shared this story I immediately asked, “What did he say after you fired him for stealing from you?” To my surprise, the husband of the owner said this employee hadn’t been fired yet. In fact, no action was taken for another week and by the time the owners finally decided to let him go, the salesman, perhaps out of embarrassment, decided to stop showing up to work, resulting in his termination.
How would you have handled this situation? What measures would you take and when?
Now that you’ve considered these three scenarios, would you manage these problematic employees in the same manner as their respective managers? I’m assuming your answer is “no.” But before you judge or criticize any of these people, you might want to consider whether you’ve acted in a similar way either in the past or the present.
Making excuses to keep bad employees is by far the most common problem I see in business leadership, regardless of how well the company operates. In fact, while all three of these stories occurred within two weeks of each other, I could have easily found numerous other examples.
You might believe you would never find yourself in a similar situation, but before you make that assumption, let’s test that conclusion with something I call the Contract Test.
The test works like this: pretend that all of your employees’ contracts are limited to a term of one year, and each of them expires at the end of day today. You now have the right to rehire as many of those employees as you wish - or to let go of those you need to.
Let’s make it even easier for you. In this hypothetical example, imagine that everyone is used to the one-year term of employment and it’s socially acceptable to not have your contract renewed. There’s no ill-will and parting ways is not taken personally by either party.
Now, would you rehire all of your current employees?
More than likely, the answer is “no.” However, this socially acceptable world of cancelling annual contracts does not exist which is why many leaders fall into the same trap as the senior managers described in these examples. And that’s understandable because letting go of an employee is hard.
When I learn about these types of situations from my clients, I never judge them badly for it. In fact, I empathize with them because I’ve been there. I too have made excuses and held on to bad employees.
It’s hard enough to manage other people, and it becomes even harder when you’re dealing with employees that are failing to perform their job well.
If you are having difficulty with some of your employees, then you are probably using one of these four reasons to avoid taking action.
1. Feeling Overwhelmed
One reason many managers ignore the problem is because of what comes next. Often, the first thoughts that go through their minds is, “If I let this employee go, I’ll have to spend a considerable amount of time (that I currently don’t have) to put together a job description, place an ad to seek new applicants, review all of the resumes, vet the resumes, call potential interviewees, interview them, check their references and then train the new hire. In the meantime, I will have to do the work of this vacant position until it’s filled.” The conclusion that most managers reach is that it’s simply too much work, so they push it off for another day.
2. The Nice Guy Image
The second reason relates to always wanting to be the nice guy. Far too often, managers are more interested in being liked than in being fair. Many managers fall into the trap of wanting their employees to regard them as the best manager they have ever had. Unfortunately, that kind of mindset prevents a person from making appropriate and sometimes difficult decisions with respect to bad employees.
3. Fear of Conflict
The third reason involves managers who fear conflict. If your role includes overseeing employees, then you will have to deal with conflict at some point. Unfortunately, many managers try to avoid or ignore the problem, to the detriment of the entire team and the company.
4. Blurring Boundaries
The fourth reason involves getting too personal with your employees and their families. When a manager creates friendships with his or her employees and doesn’t properly maintain enough separation with the people they oversee, it can become very difficult to discipline an employee who has also become a friend.
The result of any of these excuses is that underperforming employees continue to cause more work and stress for the rest of your team (the good employees) to pick up the slack. The longer a manager allows an underperformer to continue with the company, the greater the likelihood that your talented employees will leave.
Eventually, this will also catch up to the manager in charge because it creates greater dysfunction within the team. That dysfunction will result in more mistakes, higher turnover and increased stress - all of which will eventually be noticed by your own boss.
But things don’t need to go that far. To help you overcome these excuses, here are three easy steps that can guide you to a more appropriate outcome.
Perform the Contract Test. Let’s return to the Contract Test. Imagine that all of your employee contracts end at midnight tonight. Who are you signing back up? Who are you letting go? Any employee that’s not being rehired in this hypothetical scenario needs to be addressed. Figure out why those employees are not on your list of keepers so that you can create measurable expectations, hold them accountable and let them go if they continue to underperform.
Review Your Core Values. Like I mentioned earlier, I empathise with the managers in the three examples above because I’ve been there. I have also made excuses for bad employees.
However, if I were making decisions that were best for the company, I would need not look any further than the company’s core values. If I had simply asked myself, “Is this person following the company’s core values?” and answered “no,” then I would have understood that it’s time to let this individual go. The decision to terminate an employee doesn’t really need to be more complicated than that.
Talk to your peers. Be honest with yourself and recognize when you may not be able to evaluate a situation objectively. Sometimes, being too emotional or personally invested can make it hard to identify the best decision. Help yourself by asking for an outside opinion. Set your ego aside and share your situation with a peer group or trusted advisors to get an independent and unbiased opinion.
These three steps offer the checks and balances you need when faced with an underperforming employee. They will also help you create a more efficient and well-functioning team.
While it’s easy to let excuses keep you from dealing with bad employees, avoiding the situation will only make it worse. The most effective leaders are the ones that follow these steps to banish the excuses and take confident action to build a stronger team.
I hope you have a great day!