Employee Termination Mishaps
awilliams
258 Posts
What are some common mistakes that managers and supervisors make when dealing with employee terminations? What kind of messes have managers made that you have had to clean up? How have you handled these situations, and what have you done to prevent there recurrance?
Anne Williams
Attorney Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers, LLC
Anne Williams
Attorney Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers, LLC
Comments
Usually idiotic comments such as these that land the company in hot water.
Gene
Another one is those who terminate and then ask them to announce their resignation, which they won't because they're mad; the whole department gets upset and productivity plumets.
There are some I've wanted to kick.
So when a performance problem finally gets large enough to warrant implementing our progressive discipline process, even if the EE knows they have issues, he/she only has to point to the documentation in the file and wonder where all of this is coming from.
Usually by the time the issue has become large enough to discipline, the supervisor has finally had it with the EE and is ready to terminate - nothiong progressive about it.
Of course the EE is outraged that there have been all these issues that they supposedly knew nothing about.
The ones that make me cringe when I sit in on a particularly sticky term and after much coaching are the talkers...they never know when to shut up so I DO kick them.
Jane
Sorry! I forgot the topic.
Sorry Anne. We've got to keep Don happy, he's been through a lot.
Thank you all for your participation! Keep those good stories coming.
Anne Williams
Attorney Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers, LLC
I don't know what the logic was unless it was that anybody crying would be among others similarly affected in the same room at the same time. I heard that many of them were looking around the room, prior to the podium being taken, wondering, 'Hmmm, what could I have in common with these other people?'
When we were all seated, the department head looked at them and said "You're all fired. I want Sam in here as my wittness. You all held a secret meeting at someone's house on Saturday to commit mutiny on me and I won't have it. This is an at will state and you're all fired."
I know what I did. What would y'all do?
Did you kick yourself???
My second choice is to leave the room, curse a blue streak, grab the president of the company (my brother), send the pres. into the room and get a good laugh over the revenge I was getting for the way he treated me when we were younger.
When he left the room, they explained their meeting to me. Most of their 'issues' were based upon rumors and they were trying to sort out what they should do about troublemakers. Too much detail to go into here, but I told them that they are not fired. I explained that their meeting was a legal protected right. I contacted Joe and managed to reason with him, assuring him they were not attempting to throw him overboard. We sent them back to work the same day. Of course there was a lot more to it - too lengthy to go into. As a follow up, we conducted some training on rumors and communications and the proper chain of command.
The two 'troublemakers' eventually 'rumored' themselves right out of a job.
I waited a couple hours for the manager to calm down, then went into his office and told him I had reinstated the ee, whereupon the plant manager fired me! By the time I cleaned out my desk and got home, my phone was ringing and the regional HR Director told me that he had heard about the incident, and I should go back to work the next morning as if nothing had happened. #-o Sound familiar?
Since I was supporting a family and it was the only job in town, I did so, but only stayed at the job until I could find other employment. This plant manager fired me two other times after that within a year. Great times!!!
Can a department with one full-time exempt employee get a union?
Such as firing an employee who called in to say he can't work because his girlfriend lost custody of her children in court that day and he wanted to take her out of town so she could hide her kids. (Not exactly the way he told the story, but the same result.) I told the supervisor to just assign points according to our attendance policy. If this is the only stupid thing he ever does then we're all ok, if not, the system will take care of him soon enough. (I hate to pay unemployment because the judge feels the employee had a compelling emergency, and we did not follow through on our policy.)
Another big problem is simply not documenting.
Such as firing an outside sales person who repeatedly did not work and refused to turn in paperwork. The supervisor simply said 'We really like you, but your sales numbers are just too low. I'll be happy to give you a good reference on another job, though.' If we had documenation of warnings on the absences etc. we could likely have won on unemployment. (The ee is the one who mentioned the offer of a good reference during the unemployment hearing, even though the supv. denied making the statement.)
As for follow up, I created a warning form specific to outside sales and gave a copy to each sales manager, emphasizing the importance of documenting every issue.
A few years ago I decided to go back to school. After talking it over with my boss (the COO), we decided it was in the best interest of the company to hire someone to take over my present position as director and I would take a reduced role (as schooling would take a number of years), and report TO this new person.
So he interviewed, I seconded, and we hired someone. Well, he and she were like oil and water.
After a particularly tense meeting between the two of them he left the office in a huff and called me from his cell phone to tell me to terminate her!
When I went into her office she looked at me and said "oh no, you're quitting." I replied, "no, I'm not". She said "oh...I'm fired". I said "yep". And that was that. She knew where it was coming from, but can you imaging having to fire your own supervisor?