Tag: Pay

Forget TV, This is How to Fire

No organization should notify someone of their termination via cable news ticker.  Especially not while the fired individual is giving a speech to employees. Yet, performing a termination can be hard to plan and execute.  Here are my four tips on how to terminate an employee:

Do it privately. There’s no need to include an entire country, office floor, department, or cubical set in the termination.  It should be the individual’s supervisor and someone from human resources.

Pause before you do it. Firing someone at the height of anger is never the right decision.  You can suspend someone if she really made a mistake that will hurt the company, but don’t make the termination decision then.  Wait to talk with at least one other person – like human resources or your employment law attorney.  This discussion can often uncover issues that could create more risk, like the existence of an employment agreement, potential retaliation claims, and more.  Maybe an investigation should be conducted.  This pause will help evaluate a termination and all the potential risk.

Do it in the middle of the day. The first thing that happens during the day shouldn’t be a termination.  The last thing you want other employees to leave on shouldn’t be someone else’s termination.  Try for after lunch.  This gives you the opportunity to do the termination and then talk with the team it most directly affects.  Assure them that this was a business decision, and that while you are not going to share specifics, you’re there to answer questions should they have any.

Wednesdays are best. There are two reasons why Wednesdays are best.  First, when someone is terminated and he feels the termination was unjust, he wants to talk to an attorney right away.  If you terminate on a Friday, he doesn’t get that opportunity.  Instead, he has to wait all weekend, get even more upset, and may even call other employees to vent.  If you term on a Wednesday, the employee now has an opportunity to find an attorney, speak with them, and hopefully, he’ll learn he doesn’t have a case.  This can happen all before the weekend.

Second, when you terminate on a Friday, the remaining team goes home for the weekend concerned about their jobs.  They might be concerned about how they fit in or whether more terminations are coming.  You may have terminated a popular employee, who they will miss.  This change is unsettling.  By Monday, those worries could become irrational and out of control – making morale an issue the entire week.  If you terminate on a Wednesday, there are two more days for the team to ask you questions and get reassurance.  By the following Monday, things have settled, and it is likely that the termination is now a distant memory for many.

Do it with as much dignity as possible. No one likes to get terminated, and with some very few exceptions, no one loves to terminate.  If you embarrass, demean, or are in any way cruel (even unintentionally), the termination will come back to haunt you.  The terminated employee could sue you or other employees could hate you.  If you preserve as much dignity for an employee as possible, you reduce your risk.

These tips are meant to help protect an organization even while leaving an employee vulnerable.  Just thank goodness that for most of us, our terminations will never make national news.

Kate2 Comments

Beware The Subtle

Subtlety is no stranger to discrimination.  According to Harvard Business Review, subtle discrimination is the most destructive kind of discrimination.  More and more, employers (and others) are calling out subtle discrimination. This is a good thing.  Here are some examples of subtle discrimination or unconscious bias at play in the workplace:

  • Asking suspicious questions in an interview. Yes, you want to know if a candidate will be committed to our organization, but asking only females who have or could have children about their level of commitment or willingness to work some overtime could be a sign of discrimination.  Asking tall, black candidates if they love basketball does the same.
  • An all-male management team (otherwise known as the glass ceiling). If you have females working in your workplace but none of them are in management, why is that?  Is it because your industry doesn’t have many females in it (i.e. construction) or could bias be the root cause?  The same could be said for a lack of diversity at the top.
  • Assumptions that demonstrate discrimination. We’ve all the comments: all black people know each other and love hip hop or all individuals in wheelchairs want to walk someday.  We’ve also heard about the assumptions that fathers won’t want to take parental leave or pregnant women won’t return to the workplace.  The comments are sometimes well intentioned, but they’re still very much based on stereotypes and therefore, discriminatory.
  • Handling job assignments. Only women are assigned to the cosmetic account.  Only Asians handle the technical aspects of a project.  Only men handle jobs in the “rough neighborhood.”

There is no shortage of examples of subtle and/or unconscious bias at play in the workplace and in the world at large.  Our job is to do the following:

  1. Know our biases. We’ve all got ’em.  Don’t be embarrassed that you might.  Knowing our biases means we can work against them and question our own action.  Take the Project Implicit test from Harvard University.  Read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.
  1. Recognize when someone else’s bias might be at play. When a manager doesn’t want to hire a blind candidate because “he might not fit in,”  ask more questions about what she means.  Drill down when you hear comments you don’t want to see in a complaint or in the news.
  1. Train. Talk about this with managers and employees.  I know I harp on this, but it is essential and much more cost-effective than a lawsuit.  Consider it insurance.
  1. When bias rears its head, do something. Really, do something.  Not doing something could put your organization at considerable risk.

Subtle discrimination seems to be everywhere.  And, this has got to change especially in our workplaces.  When I was 15, I got to be a part of a Close Up Foundation trip to Washington, D.C. where I got to meet my Minnesota Congressional representatives.  One of the most memorable parts of the trip (there were many), was meeting California U.S. Representative Maxine Waters.  I wasn’t supposed to meet her, but she was on the Capitol steps, and I embarrassingly rushed to meet her.  Twenty-plus years later, I still admire her and marvel at the subtle discriminatory crap she and many others have to put up with.  Don’t let this stuff pervade your workplace.  Please.

Image from vecteezy.com

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