I am happy to write today about employment termination practice reminders. So let’s get right into it. First thing I’d like you to understand is a bit of the dynamics terminating an employee is a stressful event. It is certainly stressful for the employee. You can certainly understand that the employee may feel humiliated, powerless, and have a great degree of anxiety to that but losing a job for an employee is also like losing part of his or her identity. You need to keep those things in your mind when you’re talking to an employee about terminating him.
Now don’t underestimate the fact that stress will also be felt by the managers making the decision and delivering that termination decision. You will feel a great degree of stress with that. If you have done this before you know what I am talking about.
Also, something you may not realize stress will be felt by the rest of your organization. They may not understand the decision. They may not know why this has happened and you can’t really tell them. I will talk a little bit more about that but don’t underestimate the stress felt by the rest of your organization, especially if it’s someone who is popular at the organization. Similarly understand that the terminated employee can also blame others and not accept responsibility. That’s another piece of the dynamics that you need to understand. An important part and a part where I come in is to limit liability understand that a poorly handled termination event can lead to questions of discrimination and litigation something no company and no management official wants.
So, what is the goal here today? The goal is to strike a balance between respecting the dignity of the individual being terminated minimizing risk to the company and demonstrating that the situation was handled objectively and humanely. How to do that effectively is the key. I am going to talk about that.
Before the termination meeting there are certain things you need to understand. Virtually no termination decision should come as a surprise to the employee being terminated. There’s a number of ways that employees get terminated. One with poor performance, another is they could violate a rule, in other words a reduction in force situation. You have heard this many times before and I know I’m not the first person to say this: documentation of poor performance is a very important thing. No one likes to do it, but we all must do it. Why do we want to do? It’s the documentation of the poor performance, or the rule violation, is the logical business reason for the action. The action is the termination. If you have the performance documentation and you’ve gone over it with the employee the employee will understand or more likely will understand that the company believes that the performance has been poor and they’ve gotten verbal warnings or a written warning or suspension and that the termination decision is the logical next step because they have failed to improve.
Same thing if there’s a rule violation. If someone engages in harassment or other rule violations and there’s an investigation and they’ve seen the documentation. They know what the reason for the termination is. That makes things go a lot smoother. I know you don’t want to do it, but you must. That’s one of the best pieces of advice I can give you because failure to give employees a logical reason for the termination makes litigation more likely if they don’t know the reason. It’s like a vacuum they will fill that vacuum with their own thoughts and the thoughts will be to blame others and think that someone is discriminating against them. So, take this lesson wisely.
For termination of employment, you need to prepare. We need to prepare for that termination event and prepare for the meeting. What do we do? Let’s have a plan. That’s the first thing. Plan.
Where and when will the meeting take place? Well you don’t want to do it in the employees office. You certainly don’t want to do it in your office, because they may not get up and leave. You need to be able to leave if they don’t want to leave. so it makes common sense to do it in a common area. I like conference rooms. Someplace private. It needs to be private.
When should you do it? A lot of people want to do it at the end of the day. My wisdom is a little bit different. I would kind of do it towards the beginning of the day. Otherwise, you’ve let someone work the whole day then you fire them and some people including the employee may perceive that as being unfair. Do it in the beginning of the day. It gives you some time. Gives the employee some time to roll understand what’s going on and we can handle the rest of the details. So that’s what I would do.
Who should be present is another part of this plan? I would like the manager who’s making the decision to be present and someone from human resources, if possible. I do recognize some companies do not have professional Human Resources staff. Then it should be another manager, not a co-worker, but a manager. You always want people present. Why is that? Well one is there to take notes and be a witness if something odd happens. I’ll talk about that in a few lines below, but you also want someone to be there to take notes and to give support to the decision. Ideally, it’s the manager making the decision to talk.
I’ll write about the message. How to deliver that message. If there’s a Human Resources professional present right after the decision is delivered the human resources professionals should talk about transition issues. I’ll also write about transition issues shortly.
Now, before the meeting what else should you do? Confirm the reasons for the termination so everyone’s on board with that. Confirm the supporting documentation that hopefully you’ve put together to make sure that that documentation supports the action that we’re engaging in confirm that that decision is actually consistent with company policy and that we’ve done the same thing in the past where being consistent if we’re not being consistent, we should have a good reason why we’re not being consistent. You should have all that together as part of the preparation for your meeting.
Has there been an investigation? Has it been completed? Did the other side the employee get to give his or her version of what happened? Make sure you have all those things buttoned up. It’ll make life a lot easier now.
One issue that companies can struggle is what if the employee is at a remote location. Many companies have salespeople who work out of their home or in a different city or they’re in a different city, or home office. How do we terminate the? Well, there’s a couple of options. None of them are perfect. One is that a manager can visit with the employee at his home and HR could be on a telephone or it can be done by telephone and it’s not the greatest. I have seen companies fly say we have to have a meeting with you so they all fly into a central airport. Usually, it’s O’Hare and you get a conference. They’re not the greatest but depending on your situation you need to work those details out and it may wind up being over the phone again, not the greatest, but it may be advisable and you may also want to do that meeting at a central location at an airport.
I also want you to consider legal issues and you may want to contact your counsel about this either in-house counsel or outside counsel. Is this employee someone who has complained of discrimination. Are they likely to allege retaliation?
Well again the termination communication should be short to the point and respectful and the decision should be given as soon as the meeting starts. Do not have a long build up to. Let’s say soften the blow. The employee will know what’s coming. Get it over with. Deliver the message.
How do you say that? Say, “John Salley I have some bad news for you today. We’re terminating your employment effective today.” It can be as simple as that, and the meeting will flow from there. It should be the direct manager that delivers that piece of the message. Like I said before “plan” your message, stay on message, be factual, be positive, and be compassionate. Do not be apologetic. Don’t say I’m sorry. This must happen. No one’s sorrier than the employee that this had to happen. Any sort of comments by you will just ring hollow and may make them angry. Don’t do that.
The person from HR should be present to go over benefits and transition issues. The HR person can also like I said before take notes, and be a witness. It’s okay to wish the departing employee well. Be always professional. What I would stress, again, be professional at all times. I’m going to come back in a minute and talk about difficult employees because when you say you’re being terminated what is their reaction? So, stay tuned. I’ll get to that in just a moment.
Now, what are these transition issues? When is the transition effective? If it’s a reduction in force it may be at the end of the month. It may be in two months. If it’s for poor performance, it may be today. You need to know what that is. What happens to their health insurance. Their life insurance. Does it end today? Does it end at the end of the month? They’re going to ask how do I continue it? They have Cobra rights. You need to explain that. Do they have a 401k? What are those issues? Do you want the employee to sign a separation agreement and a release so they can’t sue you? Well, if you want them to you should have prepared an agreement and give to them. The law requires that you give them a certain amount of time and you need to talk to counsel about that because it depends on the circumstance and then the situation. You should have their last check and give it to them. They get vacation pay, if they have vacation days. They’re entitled to that under California law to be paid for that. They can ask when do you clear out my desk? How do I get my personal belongings?
Another reason why you may want to have it at a conference room. You may want to let the employee leave right from there so they don’t have to do what’s called like the walk of shame back to their desk and clean out their desk. It can be pretty difficult for them. I would advise that you ask the employees you want to clean out your desk or would you like us to pack up your belongings and send them to you. That’s one option. Another option is to say we’ll just pack up your belongings and send to you. So, they don’t. If you think this employee is going to be disruptive, you don’t want them back in the workplace talking to employees and making a scene. I’ve seen that happen. It’s not a pretty sight. They may ask about outplacement. Be ready for that question. They may want to say goodbye to coworkers. Well, you’re going to have to make a decision about that. Do you let them back into the office to do that? That’s going to stop production/work. If you do that understand that you may want to let them send a goodbye email that you’ve approved you. You need to look at that.
I said in the beginning that there will be issues with the remaining workers there and they may feel stress. As a result of that you need to have some type of in current internal communications. You are not going to explain the reasons why someone was let go that’s a private matter. Just put yourself in that employee’s place or in your own place. Would you want the company talking about why you were terminated? The answer is clearly no. So you’re not going to give out any private information about the reasons but you are going to have to have a communication such as ‘today was Johnny or Sally’s last day. We wish them well in their future professional and personal endeavors.” Can be something as short as that and people will ask you and you just say I can’t. I can’t disclose that.
Now computer security issues. If someone is being let go while that’s happening they need to be shut out from the computer so that they can’t do any damage. I’ve seen that happen. Collect company property, keys, credit cards, any property. What if they have a company car? You may need to figure that out.
They may ask about a recommendation. You got to be careful about that. If you’re firing someone for poor performance are you going to give them a recommendation? What have you done in the past? What’s the company’s policies on that? That’s another transition issue. There is a long list of transition issues that you need to think about.
Let me come back to something I mentioned before you have now told Sally or Johnny that they’re terminated effective today and they can have one of several reactions. They could sit there quietly understanding because they know that they’ve been doing a bad job or that they committed harassment or that the company’s going through hard financial times, and they’re not surprised by that. They could also get argumentative. They will refuse to take responsibility. They raise their voice, and they want to challenge you on every item. Why and why me? Why not somebody else? What did I do wrong and it gets a little excited. Those are some of the more common scenarios. Don’t engage in a debate. Repeat the decision. Say the decision is final that it’s not going to change. You know the reason is poor performance. These are the reasons. We’ve warned you. We’ve given you documentation. You’re aware of it and we told you that this could happen. Then you move on.
Again, remember that you need to be always professional. You don’t want to raise your voice. You don’t want to engage in a debate. You must be professional because anything you do will be looked at by everybody else as being right or wrong. They will look at the other person as being under stress and will have an excuse for being emotional not you. That’s a difficult situation, but again you need to think that through.
Now last I want to go through some common mistakes that people make and some of these I’ve already talked about in some respect. Don’t give the employee a false hope and say that you can help them find a job. Don’t do that, because you’re probably not going to. Don’t offer to provide a recommendation. Okay? We’ve talked about that, unless that’s company policy. Don’t say I’m sure you’re not going to have any trouble finding a job. You know that’s not the right thing to say to somebody because they have now lost their job and their income and they’re now upset and they’re worried about how they’re going to feed their family. Don’t pass the decision the responsibility for the decision and say that terminating them was not your idea. You’re part of the company. It’s the company’s idea. Don’t say things such as it’s probably for the best. It is not for them. not at this point. So don’t do that. These are things that will set people off. Don’t say I feel bad about this you know. Why? No one feels as bad as the employee. You can’t feel as bad as they. Do not try to defend yourself. Don’t argue. It only creates resentment, and frustration on the part of the employee. Don’t assess blame or make apologies. There’s no reason to blame the employee or the company for the termination. This is just one of those business decisions and everyone needs to move on. Don’t apologize. You can express regret but that’s different. It is okay to express regret. Don’t draw for advice. Just listen respectfully. If someone wants to talk to you at this point, if they want to go on for five or ten minutes you sit there and you listen respectfully because they’re going through a difficult time. If they have questions, you answer the questions. Be respectful. Be professional. Do not discuss the termination with anyone other than the employee and those directly involved. You don’t want to spread gossip. You don’t want to tell people these things. This is private information.
So, there you have it. Short sweet to the point. The way for you to do a professional termination without stepping on some land mines or falling into a pothole and creating legal liability for your company and hopefully if you engage in these sorts of tips that I’ve given you and plan the meeting you know with these thoughts in mind that will help you avoid these problems and let you terminate an employee with respect. Thanks for reading. More articles are at amirkohan.com.
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