Basics of Firing an Employee
Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright 1997-2008.
Adapted from the Field
Guide to Leadership and Supervision.
1. You should consider firing
the employee only if you've done the following.
You have
a) given the employee clear
indication of what you originally expected from him or her (via
a written job description previously provided to the him or her);
b) have clearly written personnel policies which specify conditions
and directions about firing employees and the employee initialized
a copy of the policy handbook to verify that he or she had read
the policies;
c) warned the employee in successive and dated memos
which clearly described degrading performance over a specified
time despite your specific and recorded offers of assistance and
any training (the number of memos depends on the nature of the
problem, but should be no more than three or four); and
d) you
clearly observe the employee still having the performance problem.
(Note that if the employee is being fired within a probationary
period specified in your personnel policies, you may not have
to meet all of the above conditions.)
2. Take a day or so to consider what you are about to do.
For example, consult with members of your board.
3. If you still decide to fire the employee, do so promptly.
Do this, both for your credibility with other staff members and so as not
begin procrastinating about this rather painful, upcoming event.
4. Write a letter of termination
to the employee.
As with the previous letters of warning,
be clear about the observed behaviors, when you saw them, earlier
warnings and their consequences, what you did in response, and
the consequence that must now be enacted according to your policies.
5. Tell the computer system
administrator to change the employee's password.
. Assert
that this action should be done promptly and in complete confidence.
6. Meet with the employee. Provide
them the letter. Explain how the termination will occur.
Include explanation of when, what they must do, what you request from them and when.
Ask for any keys. Give them a half hour or so to remove personal
items (you may choose to monitor them during this removal, depending
on the nature of the grounds for dismissal). Consider changing
the door locks to the facilities. Change the passwords on phone
systems, if applicable.
7. As with other meetings, make
notes of what was said and exchanged.
Keep them in your records.
For the Category of Supervision:
Related Library Topics
Recommended Books
For Supervising Yourself, See
Personal Development -- Related
Books
For Developing Individuals, See
Training and Development
-- Recommended Books
For Supervising Teams, See
Facilitation and Teams -- Related
Books
General Information About Supervising Other Individuals
Field
Guide to Leadership and Supervision in Business
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides step-by-step, highly practical guidelines to recruit, utilize and evaluate the best employees for your business. Includes guidelines to effectively lead yourself (as Board member or employee), other individuals, groups and organizations. Includes guidelines to avoid burnout -- a very common problem among employees of small businesses. Many materials in this Library's topic about staffing are adapted from this book.
Field
Guide to Leadership and Supervision With Nonprofit Staff
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides step-by-step, highly practical guidelines to recruit, utilize and evaluate the best staff members for your nonprofit. Includes guidelines to effectively lead yourself (as Board member or staff member), other individuals, groups and organizations. Includes guidelines to avoid burnout -- a very common problem among nonprofit staff. Many materials in this Library's topic about staffing are adapted from this book.
The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.
Also See
Human Resources -- Recommended Books
Leadership -- Recommended Books
Management -- Recommended Books
