The most difficult task for any business owner is to fire an employee even when you know that the person deserves it and you need to do it for the company to move on. It certainly is a bad feeling to take away someone’s job in present situation where economy is not good and finding a new job is quite difficult for anyone.
Firing Someone and Learning from It
However, it is a fact that you will have to take such decisions and most of the time it becomes necessary to do so. However, while giving a pink slip you also need to learn from it and understand whether it was possible to avoid it or you should have take the decision much earlier. Every time you fire an employee, there are several things to learn from it, let us now closely look at them in the subsequent sections.
Responsible for Blame:
Many times parents are to be blamed, if their children do not perform as expected and the same can be said about employees and their manager. You as owner of the company have the responsibility of setting up goals as well as guidelines for employees to follow and if the employee is unable to meet those requirements then you will have to take the blame. It is not that employee does not have to take responsibility for his failure or it is you only who is solely responsible for under performance of such employees but it may be that your role as the leader could have been better.
Lack of Communication:
If the employee is shocked when you tell him that he is fired, then it shows that you are not in control of the situation. On some occasions, it may become difficult to deliver honest feedback to employees about their performance so that they know where they have to improve. Thus, you need to communicate with your employees on regular basis and tell them about their negative points so they get the chance to rectify them.
Delaying the Decision:
Often employers delay the decision to fire a person just to avoid dealing with the situation. However, delaying the decision does not help, as it might in turn create problems in your relationship with other people working in the company or with that particular employee itself.
Assign a New Role:
Sometimes underperforming employees may fit into other roles and need not be fired. You need to analyze if the employee can fit into another role before firing him or her.
Summary:
Firing an employee is really a difficult job; however, you can learn many lessons from it to hire better employees in future.
