B2B Wins #41: Firing your first employee
Bad managers are to blame for poor employees
I recently spoke with an early-stage founder who had just fired an engineer. It was the first time they had fired someone. They were so relieved, the weight of that person was no longer on the business. They regretted not doing it sooner. Both emotions are common in such a situation.
There is an old saying related to staffing a business, “Hire slow, fire fast.” While most folks can get the hire slow thing right—though not always for the right reasons—virtually everyone blows it on the other end of the transaction firing, if at all, long after the should have.
Hiring Slow: It’s the Process
Every firing problem starts at the other end of the pipeline, hiring.
There are people who seem preternaturally good at hiring. They just seem to have a nose for good talent. This is rarely true. What they have is a good process. Sure, a little gut instinct makes its way in the process, but the process is the key.
Some of my greatest regrets in hiring were when I didn’t rely on the process. I didn’t think deeply about what I needed. I relied too heavily on one element—perhaps a person I trusted recommended the person. Or, the worst case, I needed someone quickly.
What are the elements of a good hiring process? It comes down to pretty basic elements:
Think Deeply about what you need and how you’ll find it. The pre-hiring process starts with a job description and the skills you need. The job description should be specific. If should be tight—must have vs nice to haves should be identified. If you can’t decide what you need you are doomed to not find it. Also, what are the criteria that all candidates will be evaluated on? A scorecard doesn’t prevent failure but it’s an important input into your process.
Establish an interview process. First round interviews should be done by two people, if possible. My best hire over the past few years, was someone who I thought was awesome at the first interview and the other interviewer thought was awful. When we teased apart objections, it turned out my interview partner was evaluating the candidate on criteria that weren’t critical to the job role. Two people can provide important perspectives. Depending on the domain, you can then move into interviews that focus on technical or domain expertise utilizing mini-case studies, technical assessments, and deep dives. Final rounds with senior leaders, are when the script flips and you’re usually selling the opportunity vs evaluating the candidate.
Evaluating the candidate. When you’re moving through the interview process you need to be gathering data in a structured manner so you can compare candidates. While recruiting is not solely a data exercise, having good data makes the evaluation easier.
Reference Checks. This is often an undervalued stage. Of course the candidate is going to connect you with people who are fans. That said, if you are consistent about the questions you ask and seek specific examples of performance, just like you do during the candidate interview, you can get meaningful insight.
Decision Making Process. If you’ve done this right, you’ll have a solid set of information with which to evaluate your final candidates. While the majority of the decision making process should be data driven and objective, don’t discount what your intuition is telling you.
Firing Fast: It’s the Process
No matter how well you run the hiring process you’re going to make mistakes. You will know when you make a mistake almost immediately. Something will stir in your gut. Your pride will try to quell that feeling. Don’t let it. Take action.
This is the worst part of the manager’s job. But it also has an upside. You will rarely feel better than you do when you’ve finally done the deed and excised a poor performer from the business. As an added bonus, your staff will also feel better.
Let’s focus on the impact of a poor performer for a moment. One or, often, more of these negative consequences occurs
The work isn’t being done well. The person doesn’t have the skills, experience or expertise to do the work,
Your time is spent in the wrong places. Instead of allocating time across the team or working on other priorities, you spend time with this “problem.”
The staff is demoralized. Your staff often knows well before you that the person was the wrong person. Keep a poor performer on board will demoralize the rest of the team. This can manifest in many ways, up to and including, your best performers leaving. Everyone wants to play on a winning team.
The business suffers. The lack of output causes the business to directly or indirectly suffer.
Low performing employees who are a poor fit for the job can be poison to the team and the business. The quicker you act, the less the impact.
Just like hiring slow, firing fast requires a process. The purpose of this process is to protect you and to protect your business. If you fire someone incorrectly, you can open yourself up to lawsuits and other distractions. Document your process and execute if flawlessly.
There are several important elements of a good “off-boarding” process. It doesn’t matter if you have five employees or fifty. You need to follow some manner of this process.
Follow your policy: This probably belongs up above, but you should have some basic personnel policies related to your business. Your state probably has some regulations that you have to comply with. Make sure you know these. If you have a PEO managing your personnel stuff, you probably adopted these policies when you set it up.
Create documentation: For a variety of reasons, you’re going to want to have good documentation. It’s useful and fair to the employee. It’s useful and fair to you. This will include formal warnings, performance improvement programs, emails with the person, and contemporaneous notes. You should be communicating with the employee as you get the sense that something is amiss. No one should be surprise that they’re being fired. They should see it coming.
Comply with legal stuff. This feels like a repeat topic, but make sure you’re following all the policies and other legal requirements as you go through the process. Have a checklist. Work the list. Nothing can get you in more trouble than a violation of labor law.
Communicate with the employee. This is the hardest part. Keep it short. Stay focused on the process and the information they need for their next step.
Mitigate operational risk. Part of your policy should be things like removing system access and physical access. I am not a fan of having an employee have access after they’ve been notified. Once you’ve had the discussion, immediately remove the person from the work process.
Be generous on the way out. Be generous because it’s the right thing to do. Be generous because it can avoid bitter resentment and unpleasant legal BS later. Be generous because it is likely you who made the hiring error.
Communicate with the team. It’s likely the grapevine will communicate well in advance of you, but you should have a brief conversation with the team. Again, be sure you comply with legal
Learn from the experience. Where did you go wrong? Where did the team go wrong? Was it the process? Execution? The Candidate? You’re going to have to move quickly to begin hiring. Before you do so, make sure you’ve reflected on why things went wrong.
The problem is you
When I said in the subtitle that bad managers are the problem, I meant it. A buddy of mine once said that “Everything is the responsibility of management.” He was right.
If you have a poor performer who needs to go it is your responsibility to make it happen. It is your responsibility to replace the person. It is your responsibility to do it correctly.
Having the right people in the right seats is key to business performance. Get this right and you too may be one of those mythical leaders who always makes the right personnel choice.