S/o letting go employee at nonprofit

[Anonymous]

A few days ago from someone queried about the best way to give notice to a new employee that she is not making the grade. I'm a similar position, but the opposite timing - someone who has been in the same job too long.

We are a medium sized nonprofit and firing is justifiably rare. However, this staffer has been here now for six years and long ago checked out. She's incredibly polite and (I think) well intentioned, but she has zero initiative and has been worse than phoning it in for months now. She has received increasingly less subtle encouragement that it would be best for her own career to move onto something new for at least 3 years, and at her most recent review a few months ago she was told that her performance was not meeting expectations AND encouraged to step up the job search. All that has happened since then is that she is less engaged in her work here than ever. There is a perception among others in the office that she is a very nice person who just lacks any real get-up-and-go, and probably won't leave of her own volition.

There are no dramatic screwups but she is seriously underperforming. I really need a staffer who is excited about our work and willing to invest some effort and brainpower. I really don't want to fire her outright, but I also feel like I can't just wait until she finds something new - that could be forever. There aren't real lateral opportunities in-house- she's got to find something elsewhere, as dozens of others in her position do every year. I've been encouraged to give her a timeline, of my own choosing. Any advice from anyone who has BTDT, from either end? If you've got an employee with no initiative, how do you encourage them to move on?

[Anonymous]

I would give them an end date somewhere between 30-90 days out. They get paid, get time to look, but you have a firm end date in mind.

All the encouraging in the world won't help a person who is being paid good money to do nothing to go get a new job. It just doesn't work.

[Anonymous]

Time to get direct. Put her on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and give her a time frame (60-90 days) to show progress. The PIP has to be pretty specific and actionable - not just "improve performance" but "reduce error rate by 10%" or whatever. In my personal experience, some problem employees need a kick in the ass before they get serious about looking for another job. I had an employee like that once, he had been constantly told he needed to improve and even officially suggested that he look for other work. The job was a bad fit for him, and he wasn't putting in the effort to improve. It took marking him as "poorly performing" during his mid-year evaluation (official record with HR) and putting him on a PIP before he found another job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few days ago from someone queried about the best way to give notice to a new employee that she is not making the grade. I'm a similar position, but the opposite timing - someone who has been in the same job too long.

We are a medium sized nonprofit and firing is justifiably rare. However, this staffer has been here now for six years and long ago checked out. She's incredibly polite and (I think) well intentioned, but she has zero initiative and has been worse than phoning it in for months now. She has received increasingly less subtle encouragement that it would be best for her own career to move onto something new for at least 3 years, and at her most recent review a few months ago she was told that her performance was not meeting expectations AND encouraged to step up the job search. All that has happened since then is that she is less engaged in her work here than ever. There is a perception among others in the office that she is a very nice person who just lacks any real get-up-and-go, and probably won't leave of her own volition.

There are no dramatic screwups but she is seriously underperforming. I really need a staffer who is excited about our work and willing to invest some effort and brainpower. I really don't want to fire her outright, but I also feel like I can't just wait until she finds something new - that could be forever. There aren't real lateral opportunities in-house- she's got to find something elsewhere, as dozens of others in her position do every year. I've been encouraged to give her a timeline, of my own choosing. Any advice from anyone who has BTDT, from either end? If you've got an employee with no initiative, how do you encourage them to move on?

Raises hand! Is your organization hiring? Just kidding..... sort of.

All that said, I can't imagine how hard it must be to motivate someone to move when they can't even be bothered to motivate to do the job they have now.

[Anonymous]

This is so typical passive non profit behavior it makes me crazy. So you have someone who is not working out, and you - for YEARS - sublty encourage them to leave their job, and they won't do it and oh no, what do we do now.

You want them to leave. Why should she? She has a good job where she doesn't have to do a thing.

Time to quite pussy footing around and actually manage. She is dragging down morale. WHy should anyone work hard when you don't have to? She has been there THREE YEARS TOO LONG.

Quite honestly, fire her. Offer her a nice severance of 2-3 months, contigent on her resigning. Get her to sign a non disclosure that says neither of you will talk badly about the other. She can say she left on her own terms, you pay her a lump sum.

Sure, you can drag this out. You could signal your seriousness by having a performance plan and saying she will be fired if things don't change. But will that be enough? I think you need to cut your losses.

It's hard, but you can do hard things.

[Anonymous]

You are doing a grave disservice to the people who support your non-profit by allowing this type of employee to continue drawing salary. If I knew that the money that I contribute to the causes I care about were being used in this way, I would discontinue. Of course, your contributors are never going to find out, but don't YOU feel some sort of responsibility? To be a better steward of the resources your organization relies on? She's milking you for all you're worth; probably waiting for you to fire her so she can draw unemployment - how long can you draw unemployment these days? Do not give her a time line, do not write her up. She's been warned. She's had more than enough time. Fire her and be done with it. You owe her less than what you have already given her.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone. I don't think she is a terrible person, or deliberately deceiving the organization. Just comfortable, very passive, and sort of uninspired about her career. And of course it's not a great market for people with generic skills. I don't think she loves what we do, but she doesn't seem to know what else to do. That's kind of baffling to me - at 30yo, you should have a clue or two, and most of the others at her level have tons of ambition and energy. I wouldn't mind too much except that my portfolio recently has expanded and I really need a go-getter. And I know these are great opportunities, that are not intended to be jobs-for-life; when we advertised for her job we got hundreds of resumes and that was in a much better economy. I will give a push, though. Thanks for the DCUM tough love!

[Anonymous]

BTW, the encouragement to move on has not been subtle for a while. We have talked openly about her job search for several years. I don't think I've been the world's greatest boss, but I also don't think she's been jerked around or misled about the expectations. I've specifically told her she needs to show more initiative, verbally and in writing. But maybe that is just something that is innate, or not as the case may be?

[Anonymous]

It is hard to move on when the economy sucks. She may be looking and not finding anything. If you dedcided to get rid of her, i would ask whether she wants to resign or gt fired. If she resigns she can't get unemployment

Do you give concrete examples of things she needs to do, not just say broad things like "take more initiative"? Maybe she isn't very visionary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is hard to move on when the economy sucks. She may be looking and not finding anything. If you dedcided to get rid of her, i would ask whether she wants to resign or gt fired. If she resigns she can't get unemployment

Do you give concrete examples of things she needs to do, not just say broad things like "take more initiative"? Maybe she isn't very visionary

Plus one. Maybe some guidance is needed. I had a boss at a government agency who kept insisting we weren't doing a good enough job at outreach. None of us had done much outreach before, and were confused about what he wanted. Finally someone raised his hand and sai, can you give us examples of outreach you want us to do? Could we all brainstorm ideas? And he shot the guy down, saying, that's your job to think up.

[Anonymous]

OP again, I do get what the PPs are saying. Without giving away what we do or who we are, the guidance has been reasonably specific, and it's clear what the others at this level are doing that this staffer is not. It's also clear that they all move onto bigger and better things, and she knows it is NOT supposed to be a job for life. I'm absolutely sure I could have done better as a boss, but I feel like the time for mitigation strategies has passed.

[Anonymous]

OP sounds like a bad manager, maybe OP should get another job.
This employee is liked, satisfies job requirements, but is in a career slump. OP wants this person out, not to find a way to make it work.
You can always fire, but the person could claim unemployment and that will spike the corporations insurance. Also hiring a new person takes time, and the replacement will demand a higher salary.

A good manager would make this work. You already mentioned this person is lilked

[Anonymous]

LOL, work fucking sucks. At least she shows up, right?

[Anonymous]

This is why established workplaces have HR policies and performance reviews. It sounds like your conversations have not been subtle, but could this person have interpreted them as helpful conversations about where she wants to go with her career rather than indications that her performance is subpar? It would be more direct for her to be getting a "needs development" or "not meeting expectations" on an official performance review multiple times.

[Anonymous]

Why not hire a small employment law firm and talk it through with a lawyer?