The easiest firings are those produced by unexpected crises. For instance, one of your staff members, unprovoked, hauls off and belts another. Your marketing manager is revealed to be running a scam in which he is contracted with himself to produce marketing pieces. A purchasing manager is discovered to be taking kickbacks. These are easy terminations because the provocation is clear and the remedy obvious.
But such terminations are rare. More frequent are the situations in which an employee returns from suspension and commits an offense that would provoke a counseling session or verbal warning if the individual had an unblemished record. You would like to begin the disciplinary process again, but the system demands that the individual be terminated.
No matter how unfair the situation seems to you, or no matter how talented the employee, you must rid your organization of the individual. That’s your responsibility to the firm.
If you are concerned that the employee may take the case to court, imagine yourself defending your action in front of a jury. The questions that an attorney is likely to ask include:
- Was the employee aware of the rule and that his behavior was in violation of that rule?
- How do you know that the employee knew?
- Was the employee confronted in a timely and specific manner about the rule violation?
- How often did you talk about it?
- Was the system of progressive discipline followed?
- Were the disciplinary actions appropriate to the offense?
- Is the rule applied consistently to all employees? What about discipline for violation of that rule—is that consistently applied?
- Is documentation complete? (For more about documentation, see Performance Appraisals.)
Look for anything that a third party could twist to suggest that the real reason for the termination is not the individual’s behavior but rather a personal grudge or bias. Check out past performance assessments for previous rule violations.
Finally, determine if there are any mitigating circumstances. Ask yourself, “Could a neutral and unbiased jury come to the decision that you behaved unfairly?” Certainly, talk over your decision with your own manager and/or someone from your firm’s human resources department before firing the individual.
The meeting with the employee shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. The goal is to convey the decision to terminate the employee. For the meeting, you should do the following:
- Prepare what you will say ahead of time. Bungled terminations usually result from a manager acting without thinking first.
- Be prepared to give an adequate reason for the discharge.
- Allow the employee to have a say.
- Make it clear that the decision is final.
- Suggest that the individual go to the human resources department with further questions.
Depending on the misbehavior, the response may vary from tears to shouts to threats of violence. Anger is the reaction that managers fear the most: “You can’t do this to me! I’ll get you for this!” Fortunately, anger is the least common response, and it can be defused by listening.
Of course, if you have reason to believe that an employee might become emotional or even violent, you may want to arrange to have a member of your company’s employee assistance program or a security person nearby, depending on the reaction you expect.
Increasingly, companies escort out angry employees terminated for rule violations. Where sabotage is likely, they also restrict reentry into the workplace unless a representative from the security department is present. It may be un- pleasant to tell the employee this, but such precautions could prevent the employee from exacting revenge on the organization.
If the employee appears to be in a reasonable, rational state of mind, treat the person in a professional manner. To do otherwise likely will embarrass the fired worker and unsettle coworkers, who may be demoralized by the bum’s rush being given a former colleague. Further, such behavior may so anger the terminated employee that a charge is instituted against the company, with or without cause.
Immediately after the meeting, document what happened. Actually, documentation under these circumstances may be more important than documentation of a termination meeting due to continued poor performance. Assuming that the incident is serious, necessitating immediate termination, you will want to write up what happened, the information obtained in investigating the situation if you were not present when the misbehavior occurred or was discovered, and the reasons for choosing to terminate the employee rather than take other action, like suspension.
You need to share the reason for your action with the remaining staff members. Don’t think you can get away with saying nothing. Be forthright but sparse in your explanation. For instance, you might say simply, “Michael was fired this morning after several infractions of the rules.” Or, “Despite repeated warnings and attempts to schedule her work hours so she could meet family commitments, Sharon was fired because of chronic lateness.”
Honesty may be the most prudent policy, but even if they are true, damaging comments could interfere with a former employee’s chances for a new job. You might seem callous to the remaining workers, and if your words are vile enough, they could even trigger a defamation lawsuit on the part of the terminated worker. A defamation charge isn’t a challenge to the employee’s dismissal. Rather, it charges that you significantly damaged the employee’s good name, reducing that person’s chances of being hired by another company.
A defamation case usually depends on whether or not distribution of damaging information was intentional—whether you meant to hurt your former employee. To sue for defamation, a former employee must show that you made a false or damaging statement, told or wrote that statement to at least one other employee, were negligent or intentional in communicating the statement, and/or harmed the worker in some way (such as causing him to lose a position elsewhere) by communicating the statement. Some unflattering comments don’t usually qualify as defamation. You do risk defamation when you falsely claim that the employee committed a crime, was incompetent at the job, used drugs or alcohol at work, or otherwise acted in some way unfit for the job.
But legal action shouldn’t be a cause for worry if you follow the procedures outlined here. Nor should you let your compassion for people stand in the way of taking action when an employee repeatedly violates rules. Such compassion is misdirected. Rather, your attention should be focused on those staff members who, despite their many personal problems and difficulties, adhere to the company rules and policies. Don’t let one bad apple spoil the rest of the barrel.
Quotable Quote
Coach Vince Lombardi put a manager’s responsibility this way: “A player’s got to know the basics of the game and how to play his position [employee training]. Next, you’ve got to keep him in line [discipline].”
Did you know . . . ?
If you have a system of employee discipline, you should have a system of appeals. The right of appeal is a way for employees who argue with a discipline decision to have their case heard—and to reassure juries that the employee had an opportunity to plead his argument. Some organizations provide employ- ees with rights of appeal by setting up mediation teams, where employees and management listen to the facts of the case and make a judgment about its fairness and adherence to organization policies. Union contracts specify grievance procedures for employees to follow when they believe they have been disciplined without just cause. Civil service boards and arbitration hearings are other vehicles for employees to appeal disciplinary actions.
Tips
Ambiguous rules do little. For rules to work, everyone affected by them should be able to understand exactly what they mean.
It is your responsibility to see that employees know all the rules and policies they are expected to follow.
Focus on the misbehavior, not the personality, of the rule violator.
See Also
Cava, Roberta. Difficult People: How to Deal with Impossible Clients, Bosses, and Employees. Firefly Books, 1997.
Crowe, Sandra A. Since Strangling Isn’t an Option—Dealing with Difficult People—Common Problems and Uncommon Solutions. Perigee, 1999.
Weiss, Donald H. Fair, Square & Legal: Safe Hiring, Managing and Firing Practices to Keep You & Your Company Out of Court. AMACOM, 1999.