A Lesson for New Managers: Knowing When to Cut Ties

It is important to be sure that your employees are adding value to your business and never detracting from it. This seems obvious, but my experience shows that it can be difficult to see the damage an employee is causing.

Written Apr 14, 2008, read 348 times since then.

After over a year in business, I’ve recently learned an important lesson about having employees: It is important to be sure that your employees are adding value to your business and never detracting from it. While this may seem obvious, my experience will show that it can be difficult to see the damage an employee is causing to your business.

About a month ago, I had to fire my first employee. This particular employee worked for me for about nine months. During her time with my company, she routinely called in sick, showed up late and received client complaints. Through all of those situations, I tried very hard to work with her. I developed company guidelines to address her behavior, had counseling sessions with her, and woke up in the middle of the night trying to find creative ways to help her become a better employee. However, it wasn’t until I had reason to suspect her of fraud that I considered letting her go.

Once I had reason to question this person’s employment at my company, I began to calculate the monetary loss that we experienced as a result of her tardiness, absenteeism, customer complaints, and the excess time and energy her behavior had required of me. My findings were staggering.

After realizing how much this person had detracted from the value of my company and had potentially marred our reputation, I was quite angry with myself. I realized that the fault laid more with me than with my former employee. I allowed this person to destroy a small part of what I had created. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could have done differently, and how I should have addressed the situation much sooner.

All of this contemplation led me to define a new standard for my employees: They are to always add to and never detract from the value of the business. While this may seem simple and obvious, I needed this experience to open my eyes to the fact that I had too much, unnecessary tolerance for poor behavior and work ethic. Now that I am fully aware of the damage that a bad employee can cost not only to the bottom line, but to my reputation, company culture, and my personal well being, I am confident that future damage will be minimal.

Here is a good analogy for the situation: I spent a lot of time building a house. Then I hired an employee to help me continue to build it. Once this person was working for me, she began to hammer away at the foundation instead of adding to it. I rushed up behind her and desperately tried to reattach the pieces that were crumbling off, but was unable to keep up with her damage. I was paying her to destroy part of what I had created. Additionally, since I was trying to fix her hammering, I was exerting too much energy to continue building onto the house myself.

Why would I let someone do this? Because I thought I could fix a bad employee. I’ve realized that not only may it not be possible, but it may not be worth it. As an employer, you need to constantly evaluate your employees’ value to the company and be ready to take action if what you see doesn’t look good. Always be aware of the dynamics of your business and make the changes necessary to be sure that you are preserving the fruits of your labor.

Learn more about the author, Stephanie Toler.

Comment on this article

Posted by David Drumhiller, Seattle, Washington | Apr 18, 2008

Nice work, I like the analogy and I find it relevant to the situation. Firings are never fun, but in most cases they are a win win for both parties after the whole thing plays out
Posted by Aaron Graham, Seattle, Washington | Apr 18, 2008

Nice article Stephanie! I need to know though... what kind of actions did you take to restore the goodwill of your company with the clients that the lady had messed with?
Posted by Colin Christianson, Seattle, Washington | Apr 18, 2008

Great article!! I ran into this situation more than once and since I have a psych degree you know I tried to develop them when they didn't even have the will to develop themselevs. If they can't motivate themself to learn, I agree, they are not worth wasting your time on.
Posted by Karrie Kohlhaas, Seattle, Washington | Apr 19, 2008

Right on Stephanie--Yes, there should be more focus on whether an employee adds something to the business, not simply whether you can tolerate them.

I often work with clients on hiring and firing employees and it's amazing how much people are willing to put up with in their own business. There is a lot of fear about being the bad guy; so many business owners will allow their employees to run all over them. This is very common.

Sounds like you have put some key elements in place, like guidelines and ways to address problems, but sometimes it's just not a good fit.

Most states in the US are considered at- will meaning that employers can legally fire without giving a reason (some exceptions being discrimination involving a protected class or an employee hired under a contract that sets limitations on termination--like a union contract). But there is still this strange obligation on the part of business owners to "make it work."

Funny, because this is often how people approach love relationships too--"maybe if I do this or that better, things will improve," etc.

When hiring, I recommend setting up a trial period so you can check out the work ethic of your new employee--3 months is pretty standard and a good amount of time for you to see patterns of behavior in a person. This also allows the employee to see if it's a good fit for them.

A trial period should end with an evaluation in which you have an honest conversation and go over both positive and negative feedback with your employee. In this conversation you, the business owner, can notice how the employee responds to your comments and you can set up the basis for how they are to continue working with you, or not.

Often business owners find it easier to let someone go after the trial period than to flat-out fire someone after hiring them indefinitely.

This is also a good time to get feedback from the employee on how they see they would like to help improve the company. If they don't have any ideas, that should tell you something, as an invested employee who wants to add to your business will have come up with some innovations on their own by this point.

I really appreciate you sharing this story and hope it hits home with biznik members who are keeping someone on who is not ADDING to their business.

ThoughtShot Business Consulting
Posted by Jack Fecker, Seattle, Washington | Apr 19, 2008

I use 3 to 5 days as the trial period. It doesn't take very long to see if it is a right fit. You could look at it like 3 or 4 dates ,the amount of time it takes to find out if you want to spend a lot of time with this person.
Posted by Keith Gormezano, Seattle, Washington | Apr 19, 2008

I am going to be passing along this article to a few of my clients who are experiencing this same issue.

I am also going to send it to a few select friends who are unhappy employees and pointing out that if your employer is not supportive, then why are you working for them.

Dr. QuickBooks: I make house calls to teach you.
Posted by Annie Jacobsen, Seattle, Washington | Apr 20, 2008

Steph ~

As someone with a business that refers my clients to your business, thank you for the trust in flagging my attention your article. My business reputation rests on your good business and employees. You have always made things right, on the rare occasion anything needed "correcting" - and that is a major part of my choosing to refer Assisted Transitions' clients to Sage Clean.

I have an employee I used to use who was ambitious, quick to pack and always prompt. However, her personal issues in her life would come up in conversation during a work day at our clients, and it was overly personal and inappropriate. Another past employee would comment on the reading materials or personal effects of our clients; sometimes the client was present, sometimes not.

In both of these cases, I wimped out and simply stopped giving them shifts. I did the awake-at-night-planning of the perfect coaching conversation that you mention. I worried myself over needing good crew, and wondered if I was overreacting. I didn't, however, step up and address the issues directly with either of these (overall good people) employees, but got busy with finding new crew that fit our business needs of appropriate conversation and respect for privacy.

Your article really was an unexpected check-in for how I've addressed similar issues. Your value bases for evaluating employees is great. Now I just need to take your lead and address my employees rather than slinking away from the difficult conversation. We owe our clinets our best, and your article made me face that I owe my employees my best as a boss, as well.

--> I am also curious to see your response to Aaron's question about how to repair the goodwill of the client. Maybe another topic to start...

Thanks for your article ~ Annie

Assisted Transitions ~ personalized move management
Posted by Stephanie Toler, Seattle, Washington | Apr 21, 2008

Thank you, everyone, for your comments on the topic addressed in my article, especially those of you who were able to relate to me in this scenario. It was a difficult, yet important growing experience.

With regard to Aaron's question above, I have always tried to keep the good will of my clients as my company has grown. Communication is the only way to do that. I make a genuine effort to check in with clients and address any concerns they may have, in any way that I can.

It is this open dialogue that I keep with our clients that eventually led to making this particular personnel decision. I truly value our client's feedback and know that their satisfaction is a true measure of my business.

Of course, the right place to be is where nobody ever complains because they're happy with your company. That's how I expect my employees to feel, and have taken steps to ensure that they know what our standards are.

Thanks again!

-Stephanie
Posted by Carol Skolnick, Santa Cruz, California | Apr 24, 2008

Great analogy. We've got enough to do without trying to fix others. What we can do is to encourage our employees to excellence, the quality we hire people for in the first place. If the employee is not interested in that, it's a kindness both for you and for the employee to release them from that obligation.
Posted by Ben Resnick, Seattle, Washington | May 10, 2008

Great article, very true.