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When to let someone go if it will leave you short-handed
Hi,
I run the marketing team at a small (currently) but very fast growing company. Right now the team consists of 3 other people, all who report to me. Over the next few months we will be going through some acquisitions that will increase the teams workload by 2-3x and are currently hiring for roles to cover the gaps we see ahead.
My current issue lies with the most junior role on my team. An admin (her first role out of college) who has been with us for about a year. Working remotely has been hard on her and over the last few months her productivity, efficiency and accuracy (which were never really great but she's young and was "new") have severely dropped. For the last month or so I have been working with her one on one to improve performance and have been very honest with her that her level of performance has to improve but the problems seems to be getting worse. We're talking just really really REALLY careless mistakes, a lack of communication and follow-up with myself and the rest of the team, and really poor time management. I am hand-holding her right now, doing daily scheduled check-in phone calls, having her make to-do lists and take notes and share them with me and trying to be as open and available as I can to her for help and questions. She's still making various mistakes that go live with our campaigns or that I am catching last-second. The number of mistakes has actually increased.
I've always had the philosophy that team comes first. Once someone starts becoming deadweight or a burden the rest of the team that holds them back from producing their best work, they should no longer be on that team.
The issue is I have much more priority roles to hire for right now. And she is responsible for a lot of the daily production stuff that isn't going to stop. I'm not sure what's worse for me (and the team right now) spending way too much time hand-holding her for still sub-quality work or just doing it myself while I look to hire one of the very good people who lost their jobs throughout the pandemic.
Any insights would be so appreciated!
Annetta Moses
Consumer Insights and Strategy Leader
1.31k
09/21/20 at 4:43AM UTC
Here are somethings to consider.
1) With coaching can the employee improve to satisfactory performance? If not, your continued investment seems like wasted effort.
2) If the employee was not there and you consider the amount of time you send coaching her, could you get the work done faster if you did it yourself? For example, if you spend 3 hours with her on a project that would take you 1 hour, you are not using your time effectively.
3) Could you hire a temporary worker to do the work of the employee if she was terminated? This may be a short-term option to get the work done.
If you believe she can't do the work, I suggest that you talk with your HR staff and move forward with a formal Performance Improvement Plan. I hope that you documented her unsatisfactory performance so that the employee will agree that she needs to improve. I have had a few employees that when faced with a PIP found jobs at other companies within 30 days.
Good luck.
Good luck.
EK WhitcombI Help Leaders Fix What's Broken
24
09/17/20 at 12:43PM UTC (Edited)
I agree that it's time for a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). When it comes to marketing and communications, mistakes can be deadly to a brand. It sounds like you have done great work with her, but she is unable to implement. I understand that working from home and the potential distractions can be very difficult to manage. But at the end of the day, she has an important role and needs to check her own work. Put a deadline on improvements, with clear expectations of measurable results. It is SO great that you want her to succeed, but if it's getting worse, this just might not be a good fit. From what little you have shared about the role, it seems you can outsource this via Fiverr or Upwork and get some great results, and quickly. You can stop using these folks at any time and only pay hourly (no benefits, little need for performance management and the ability to move to another service provider quickly). This will help fill the gap if she doesn't deliver after the PIP period has ended. Best practice is that a PIP should be in place for no more than 30 days,. Given that you have already been having these performance conversations, you can even do as little as a week or two. This will absolutely give her clearer understanding of what is at stake and she will either start to deliver or will find she just can't. As an immediate back-up: there are some amazing people out there with great writing/editing/marketing skills, who are used to working remotely. They can help you scale until you find an adequate replacement. The kinds of mistakes you are outlining would make me TOTALLY NUTS. I had to have some tough conversations about these exact things and was surprised at how "shocked" some of the most creative people are, when called out for messy mistakes. Your time is valuable and you can't continue to clean up after her. She can either do it or she can't., and a written PIP with measurable outcomes will reveal exactly what you need to do next. Best of luck to you!
Chloe Nguyen
96
09/10/20 at 6:34AM UTC
It seems like she just doesn't care about her job, but in the interest of giving her the benefit of the doubt, I think you should continue to speak openly and honestly about her performance, letting her know how her sub-par performance is impacting the company and the team, and making an outright open invitation to let you know if something is going on (that's a hard line to walk since in some cases, for you as her boss, the less you know the better, but maybe phrase it in a way to let her know you're there to help and that she needs to tell you when something is going on that impacts her performance, such as now, so you can work around whatever situation is arising. It's way better for her to tell you she needs half a day off to go to an important appointment and for you to arrange other coverage than for her to not tell you and try to work on mobile during the appointment where she can't fully pay attention to her work, for example.).
In terms of the "when": I think you should draft achievement milestones that are clearly measurable with defined dates in small increments to track progress, go over them with her to get her sign-off, give her a copy, and then go over that in your weekly review. Make it clear that if she doesn't hit these milestones, her job is in jeopardy. At the end of that period (2 or 3 months or so, or whatever you decide), review with her what's been missed and achieved, and that's your decision.
You are already doing the above, but the difference or the suggestions here are to make sure she knows that she can be fired. If something isn't going on in her life that is leading to this bad performance, she either doesn't care about her job and/or she doesn't think she can get fired.
In contrast to the above though, I have learned to live by the rule of "hire slow, fire fast." In my experience, most people do not get better. I have regretted not firing people sooner. The above suggestions are more for CYA. But for your other piece about picking up her slack in between: I would hope that others can help pick up the slack and it will not fall solely on your shoulders. It is likely that others on the team know of her shortcomings and will be fine with helping share the workload until you can hire someone new down the line.
Chloe Nguyen
96
09/10/20 at 5:11PM UTC
I slept on this and realize I didn't really answer your question, I'm sorry. I think it's worse to keep an underperformer even if it puts more workload on the rest of the team. The rest of the team is shouldering the burden anyway; at least this way, it would be done correctly. You mentioned that you would take on the extra work in the admin's absence, but hopefully that work could be shared across the couple of other folks.
AJ MitchellDOES IT ALL
40
09/08/20 at 9:02PM UTC
Letting someone is always a very tough decision. I recommend checking company policies and discussing with HR first. But it sounds like now is the time to part ways. When they are hurting you and your team more than they are helping.
MoneyCareerMotherhoodSmart financial decisions for work & home
175
09/06/20 at 12:36PM UTC
It sounds like you've communicated openly with her about the areas she need to improve in, which is great. Have you asked her what barriers she's experiencing right now in reaching these improvement targets? I would ask her that and also her recommendations for steps you and the company can take to help her be successful. It sounds like you don't know why she isn't improving, so it could be anything from extreme personal stress due to COVID situations, to a lack of technical skills for the job, to her just not liking what she does. Understanding from her perspective will allow you to: a) understand what's necessary to get this employee up to par, b) how successful those efforts would be in hitting her improvement targets, and c) if you and the company are willing to make the investment . If not, it may be time to part ways.
And separately, integration of acquisitions are intense and require a LOT of administrative work. I would expect given her role her workload could increase significantly for a period of time. I can't answer which is worse to deal with, but you will need strong employees to manage through the transition, including in her position.
Amy Fortney, PMPBusiness Strategist & Fractional COO. Doer.
2.27k
09/06/20 at 3:08AM UTC (Edited)
When to let someone go? It sounds like right now.
This may seem clinical because it is always preferable to work cooperatively with our direct reports and celebrate their improvement, but it sounds like the time for hand-holding has passed.
I think of management problems in one of two ways: 1. Long Term Operational Problems. 2. Short Term Operational Problems. Separating from an underperforming employee who was first given adequate training and support by you at the time of hire and then has completed a correctly structured Performance Improvement program without improvement is a Short Term Operational Problem.
Always.
You and other team members may be inconvenienced by a heavier workload for a short period of time, but it may not be significantly more than the time you are spending now. What could you do with the recovered time? The answer is: hire a replacement and move on to other needs.
I would reconsider your assessment of the role of an admin as junior or less important than other hires you need. If you are in a production environment and her role provides essential support to you and your department as you grow, then there is no more important role in your department.
My rule for managers is: You should always be hiring. By that I mean that you need to source resumes for every role that reports to you, even if you don't think you need them. People leave jobs without warning all the time. Protect your efficiency by making it a habit to spend a few minutes each week sourcing resumes. It is a risk management imperative so you can pivot and move forward with speed.
Think about the hiring process you follow. What tasks in sourcing and hiring could be compressed or outsourced to hire, on-board and train a replacement in as short a period as possible?
Providing effective training is also a critical risk management task that companies and managers overlook because it's easier to find excuses not to spend the time or money on it. How many times do we hear "hit the ground running" as a badge of honor, when it is often a euphemism for bad training that lead to just this situation? Is your training program adequate?
Mandy TroutenEverything at www.mariese-skincare.com
765
09/06/20 at 2:53AM UTC
You've said that it's her first role out of college and that working remotely has been hard for her. I think that's every reason to be more patient and to plan around the need to provide more training. Far too many companies won't hire, even for junior positions, without an advanced degree and umpteen years of specialized work experience. Meanwhile, very little of k-12 or college is built on the concept of working remotely. People with years of experience are scrambling with this. Can you really expect a newbie to have a firm handle on it?
Instead of firing her, I would encourage you to add more time to your schedule. If you need it by September 20, tell her that she needs to have it to you by September 10, or whatever date would allow you sufficient editing time. Don't lie or sugarcoat it. Just politely tell her that she is not up to par, for xyz reasons, and then tell her what you're prepared to do to help her improve. Then, work with her. Train her--another thing that far too many companies won't do. She might actually be unfit for this field, or she might just need more time and actual training to become mindblowingly good.
Anonymous
09/06/20 at 1:38AM UTC
Have you talked to her about what’s going on in her personal life during this pandemic? She could be struggling personally. Since this is her first real job, she may also be struggling to acclimate to the speed of how fast things move. There are so many factors that could come into play.
Where do you want yourself and the team to be spending time on right now and in the next two months? Do you want to spend your time coaching and reviewing her work or do you want to spend your time doing, preparing and on boarding a new employee remotely?
If you put her on a Performance Improvement Plan, you want to manage her out of the company. Since this is her first job, she may not understand that.
Barb HansenStartup Product, Growth & Strategy
6.67k
09/06/20 at 1:20AM UTC
I will add ... that sometimes keeping an unproductive team member (for any number of reasons) can start to affect the rest of your currently productive team.
Afshan Aman-MartinData | Platform | Backend Engineer
36
09/06/20 at 1:13AM UTC (Edited)
What I think is needed here is not just your goodwill and investment in the employee but also a methodical way to solve the problem.
I recommend to come up with a plan with specific performance outcomes for her, but also time-boxed, so you dont keep wasting time if the goals are not met by the employee. Share the plan with her, and explain the consequences if the goals are not met by their respective deadlines.
Looks like you have already spent a few days or weeks working with her and have communicated clearly, but for your own sake, just putting some deadlines on how much time you need to give at each stage of the "performance improvement plan" before moving on to the next phase, would be helpful.
Essentially, you need to have a plan B to hire her replacement at some point, so you dont have to keep doing what she is supposed to do, in case you get no-where after investing the time in her.
And to quantify the 'When ' part in the question, I think 3 months after the Performance Improvement Plan is clearly communicated to the employee, is reasonable.
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