Firing long-time employee

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have had discussions from day 1 about how things needed to change. His performance reviews going back 10 years said the same things needed to change. The company paid for an executive coach for him to try to fix the same issues to no avail. I have no question that it’s the right decision. I just feel bad about it.

I guess I’m wondering why no one cut him loose before if that’s the case.

IF the employee has good evaluations from prior years and they are older than the rest of the team, a sudden change in evaluations followed by termination looks a lot like age discrimination

OP said the same issues have showed up for 10 years on his reviews, so this is not the case.

In that case, the issues have been documented for 10 years and acceptable and now they are being fired?

Yes, this is strange. If I were OP i'd be wary of this. I was put in a position to "clean up" an org that had problems like that, and once that was done and it was how they wanted it, I was let go--largely because of the backlash of having to fix things. Nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have had discussions from day 1 about how things needed to change. His performance reviews going back 10 years said the same things needed to change. The company paid for an executive coach for him to try to fix the same issues to no avail. I have no question that it’s the right decision. I just feel bad about it.

I guess I’m wondering why no one cut him loose before if that’s the case.

IF the employee has good evaluations from prior years and they are older than the rest of the team, a sudden change in evaluations followed by termination looks a lot like age discrimination

OP said the same issues have showed up for 10 years on his reviews, so this is not the case.

In that case, the issues have been documented for 10 years and acceptable and now they are being fired?

They need someone who is willing to do the dirty job, and OP is it.

[Anonymous]

Is an official PIP one of these various performance reviews? You can give him a generous one - like 4 - 6 months. Plenty of time to either finally improve or to find another job.

Sometimes upper management views new management situations as an opportunity to finally get rid of dead weight. They're making you do their dirty work.

If it's been going on for years, I don't think you need to worry about optics. Everyone should know he's dead weight.

I was in similar situation, OP. It sucked. Thankfully my employee found a position that was a much better fit so I didn't feel too guilty in the end. The bar we set in the PIP was insultingly low and he still chose to leave.

[Anonymous]

OP, before you do anything you need to loop in your higher ups about why he has not yet been fired. I work with someone who’s had performance issues for 20 years. It’s awful, but there is no institutional appetite to fire them so we all just have to muddle through and work around it, and the cascading effects (bad) on everyone else on the team. Since you are new, please figure those dynamics - why are things the way they are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, before you do anything you need to loop in your higher ups about why he has not yet been fired. I work with someone who’s had performance issues for 20 years. It’s awful, but there is no institutional appetite to fire them so we all just have to muddle through and work around it, and the cascading effects (bad) on everyone else on the team. Since you are new, please figure those dynamics - why are things the way they are?

Great advice.

If they hired you to be the bad guy who is there to clean up, get explicit sign-off from senior management. Talk with seniors and HR about how to address the issue - i.e., "If X, Y, and Z is not fixed by December 31, you will be terminated."

Then again, management typically prefers terminations to be pretty sudden in order to prevent willful destruction of work product, theft of organization work product, or working with a lawyer to bring a workplace discrimination/harassment allegation.

If this person is in their 50s, their career likely will not recover from this setback.

[Anonymous]

This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would the company keep on an employee with TEN years of poor performance reviews?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would the company keep on an employee with TEN years of poor performance reviews?

Someone looked at the budget and realized they had an old guy with decades of raises at the same level as younger cheaper employees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, before you do anything you need to loop in your higher ups about why he has not yet been fired. I work with someone who’s had performance issues for 20 years. It’s awful, but there is no institutional appetite to fire them so we all just have to muddle through and work around it, and the cascading effects (bad) on everyone else on the team. Since you are new, please figure those dynamics - why are things the way they are?

Agreed. You need to find out from higher up management and/or HR why he has been given the same critique for 10 years, but not one has fired him. If the management did not want to fire him for those offenses for years, why do you have to fire him for the same issue that has been ignored for many years. How have previous managers dealt with this issue? If management has not been willing to fire him for those offenses for 10 years, why do you have to do it? You could make the case to management that you need to add an additional position to augment what he is doing that he does poorly and have someone else take over those duties and get him to shift to duties that he can do well.

But you have to get higher up management buy-in for why they have let this same issue go for so long and why you have to be the first manager in 10 years that needs to let him go. And see if you can find a way to repurpose him and get another staff member to work around his faults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would the company keep on an employee with TEN years of poor performance reviews?

Someone looked at the budget and realized they had an old guy with decades of raises at the same level as younger cheaper employees

Right. Brutal. It’s kind of sad to think about working someplace with this kind of culture. Let him fail up for DECADES, and then fire him??? Horrible. I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.

[Anonymous]

It must be new policy. Before, you need a mass layoff to get rid of incompetent and lazy workers.

[Anonymous]

He needs a come to Jesus meeting first, he’s been allowed to continue with no repercussions so you’re gonna have a tough time with this one. He deserves a real sit down, saying that he WILL be terminated if he can’t fix this issue. Then give him maybe 3 months to show improvement and then he’s out. You will have at least given him fair warning that what was acceptable before is no longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would the company keep on an employee with TEN years of poor performance reviews?

Someone didn’t have the courage to fire him just like OP. Don’t you see how OP is struggling with this decision.
She may punt like others have and next thing you know a new boss is facing the same situation in 5 years and wonder why the guy is still there after 15 years if bad performance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, before you do anything you need to loop in your higher ups about why he has not yet been fired. I work with someone who’s had performance issues for 20 years. It’s awful, but there is no institutional appetite to fire them so we all just have to muddle through and work around it, and the cascading effects (bad) on everyone else on the team. Since you are new, please figure those dynamics - why are things the way they are?

Great advice.

If they hired you to be the bad guy who is there to clean up, get explicit sign-off from senior management. Talk with seniors and HR about how to address the issue - i.e., "If X, Y, and Z is not fixed by December 31, you will be terminated."

Then again, management typically prefers terminations to be pretty sudden in order to prevent willful destruction of work product, theft of organization work product, or working with a lawyer to bring a workplace discrimination/harassment allegation.

If this person is in their 50s, their career likely will not recover from this setback.

+1 million. He's been underperforming for TEN years and now you're brought in to fire him within six months. I'd raise a lot of process stink here and make 100% certain company leadership/management is on board. It would be rpeferable to have one of them there in or have their agreement to fire him in writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is an official PIP one of these various performance reviews? You can give him a generous one - like 4 - 6 months. Plenty of time to either finally improve or to find another job.

Sometimes upper management views new management situations as an opportunity to finally get rid of dead weight. They're making you do their dirty work.

If it's been going on for years, I don't think you need to worry about optics. Everyone should know he's dead weight.

I was in similar situation, OP. It sucked. Thankfully my employee found a position that was a much better fit so I didn't feel too guilty in the end. The bar we set in the PIP was insultingly low and he still chose to leave.

+1 A friend recently interviewed for a job at my company and learned that part of the role would be "restructuring how the team works". She didn't take the job. The person who did learned that "restructuring how the team works" meant he had to fire half the department and he didn't stay long after that was done. Because then he was expected to still meet their goals with half the staff.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know why so many on DCUM side with coddling slackers. While people may feel sorry for this guy, where’s the sympathy for his co-workers who had to deal with him for a decade? And, what about the worker’s ethics of taking full pay and not doing his job for ten years? Frankly, I have no sympathy for such a person. He’s been playing his co-workers and company for 10 years, and now he’s finally going to bear some consequence. Good riddance!