When “Employee-Friendly” Kills Employee Engagement
Firing people. It’s arguably the hardest part of leading people. If you’re a decent human being, letting somebody go is no fun. For most of us, it’s excruciating.
And that’s precisely why it’s so important.
Because firing people stinks, many leaders avoid it. They shift resources, they justify, they rationalize, they shift blame, they feel guilt for not developing the employee. They do everything BUT terminate the employee.
I worked for two Fortune 500 firms before coming to Quantum Workplace. When it came to firing, the two cultures fell on opposite ends of the spectrum.
- The first was an aggressive “up-or-out” culture where employees knew that poor or mediocre performance would lead to a pink slip.
- The second was an “employee-friendly” culture where loyalty to employees was highly valued. Poor performers were coached and developed – and I only remember one termination in my 3 years at the firm.
Which sounds better to you? If you had asked me 12 years ago – as a recent grad entering my career – which culture sounded better, I’d have chosen “employee-friendly” all day, every day. I think many folks would agree.
But after living and breathing inside these two very different cultures – I can tell you that if “employee-friendly” means not terminating poor performers, then you’re doing it wrong.
At company #2, the single biggest drag on employee engagement was failure to terminate poor performers. The company became a cess-pool of mediocre performance. (To be clear, there were a bunch of all-stars on the team drowning in the pool.) At best, poor performers were coddled and coached to a level of mediocrity (in most cases, mediocrity was either an act or a short-term stopover on the way back to Suckville). At worst, they were shifted to another division or another role with the leader saying, “they’re not a good fit here, but I think they’ll do better over there.” What’s really on a leader's mind when they say something like this: “She’s not my problem anymore.”
But let’s think about what this mindset means for your organization. Not only must your “good people” overcome (and make up for) the poor-performer's deficiencies, every time they see poor performance ignored, they must wonder “Why am I working so darn hard? That guy’s still here…” A poor performer is not a benign tumor – he's a malignant pathogen that will infect your entire organization if left untreated.
That’s why one of “the 15 Skills” of LeaderGrade – our 360 leadership assessment – is “Confronts Issues”, which includes terminating poor performers in a timely manner.
To learn more about the universal leadership skills measured by LeaderGrade, download “The 15 Skills: How To Be a Great Leader”.
