Firing an employee is usually a difficult task unless things have degraded to a point where you are eager to terminate them. Nonetheless, there are some tips available for doing it the “right” way. CareerBuilder has a solid, basic article that hits the high points of terminating an employee – What to Know About Letting an Employee Go.
Here’s a good tip from the article:
It’s About Time
It used to be the general consensus that late Friday afternoon was considered the ideal time to drop the hammer on an employee. But experts in the Human Resources industry now believe that earlier in the day, or even the week, is a more appropriate time to deliver the bad news.
Guy Kawasaki goes into much more detail with some excellent points to consider in his post The Art of Firing. Two points I want to call out from the post.
First:
Be firm. Never go into a final conversation thinking that if it goes well, you might not fire the person. Decide and then implement. If you get talked out of it, the odds are that you’ll simply fire the person later. However, don’t confuse being firm with being mean. You should be firm in your decision, but kind in how your decision is communicated and implemented.
This point cannot be stated enough. I have seen this reversal first hand and Guy is absolutely correct – the person ended up being fired later. A termination is a final decision and one that should be contemplated thoroughly, acted upon with finality and done so graciously. This is not the time to have a change of heart.
Finally:
Look in the mirror. Ideally, the situation should have never come to this. You should have hired the right person. You should have set and communicated the right goals. You should have provided course corrections. Some of the fault probably belongs to you. Its too late for the case at hand, but its not too late to prevent this from happening again, so take a good, long look in the mirror.
Many managers do not like this point but they do own a part of the failure. Hiring, ramping and succeeding are all imperatives that are owned by the employee and their manager. If there is a termination, there was a misfire somewhere in the process. If so, analyze and change your process.
I was fired from my 2nd sales job out of college. The manager was a real piece of work. He hired me for an inside sales position and stuck me in an East coast territory with no product training (selling after market copier parts). The next training class didn’t start until 3 weeks after I started. Also, it was advanced training for the outside sales reps. I hammered my way through the sales calls for 3 weeks with minimal success and much on-the-job training. This manager did not like my approach or limited success. I made it to the week long training class and he pulled me out of there on a Friday morning and fired me on the spot. I’ll never forget how unprofessional the entire organization was towards a new, young salesperson. In my view, I never had a fair shot to succeed and I have shared that experience whenever that company’s name has come up in conversation.
Interesting side point – the CEO of that large company is now in jail after some creative accounting practices that lined his pockets. I suppose that speaks to the culture that existed in that corporation.