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Matt Mochary’s Mochary Method Curriculum
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When you do fire someone, put yourself in their shoes. It is a devastating event emotionally. And it is a real setback financially. Your team will also be watching closely to see how you treat ex-employees: a vindictive attitude will make everyone feel unsafe!
Put real effort into helping the person find their next job, and quickly. Give them a severance package that gives them enough time to find another job and have the pay begin realistically. This package is two months minimum, but more realistically, three months or more. And then help them find work within that time frame.
Because you value transparency, make an announcement to the company about the person's departure, or allow the person to do it themselves. When you make the announcement, DO NOT blame or criticize the person. Instead, praise the person's contributions to the company, and take ownership yourself for the fact that you weren't able to match their skills to the company's needs. Either you didn't evaluate well during the recruiting process, or you didn't onboard and train well. Take responsibility for the situation, and explain what you are doing to ensure it doesn't happen again.
It is highly likely that you will be feeling anger toward this person.
- You value the rest of your team much more highly than this person. You will not want to give the person an extra penny beyond what is required by law (2 weeks). You will want to save those resources for the team that remains that is performing.
- You likely also think, "This person is a liability. I don't ever want to be associated with this person, and I wouldn't want them associated with my name ever again."
Feel this anger, and then let it pass.
- Recognize that you have a responsibility here. Your recruiting, training and management helped create this situation. It is your responsibility to help the person find a job and a better fit company. If you want to save your company's resources, then help them find that job more quickly. And then turn to your recruiting, training, and managing processes, and ask yourself: "What can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again?"
- Recognize that this person did not have the skills or behaviors you needed, but they have passions. Find out what those passions are. Behind those passions are likely excellent skills. Help the person determine what role (it may not be in the business world) would be a great fit for them. What would their dream job be? Then become their agent, and help them land that dream job. Do exactly what an agent does:
- Interview them to discover what their ideal role is. Match that ideal against your knowledge of their skills/passions to actual roles available to determine a real job that they would enjoy and be good at.
- Create a written description of the person and their talents. If OKed by the person, post it on your social media (LinkedIn, Twitter) with your written endorsement of the candidate. Ask interested employers to contact the person directly.
- Offer to send a message of recommendation if the candidate gets past a first-round interview at a company. Use LinkedIn to discover who you know at that company.
- I have found that the message of endorsement works one time and usually moves the candidate to the next stage. You can either use the bullet to get the candidate an interview or use it after the first interview to land them the job itself. The latter is much more valuable.
If you do this, not only will you be doing the right thing and taking responsibility for your actions, but you will also create a culture of safety in your company.
- It will put your remaining team at ease (allowing them to perform better at their job), and news of this culture will spread quickly so that soon your Glassdoor reviews will rise. This action, in turn, will make your company a far more desirable place to work, and your rate of offer acceptance will go up dramatically.
- It will ease pressure during the recruiting process. If you and your team know that you have a humane approach to letting people go, you can take a bit more risk on people with great potential but little experience during the recruiting process. And those often end up being the best performers.
- It will allow you to let underperformers go sooner because you won't dread the trauma of the firing process. There will be no trauma.
Yes, doing the right thing often pays for itself several times over!
I call the process above "Firing Well." If you learn how to do it, you benefit from a happier culture, a bolder hiring process, and a much more effective performance management system. All of these will strengthen your team and your company.