Management Challenges - Firing Employees

Firing an employee is without a doubt one of the most stressful events that I've experienced as a manager. Contrary to popular belief I think that most managers take no pleasure in being forced to let someone go. Even when termination was well deserved I always found it extremely difficult to take that final action.

In my seven years as a mid-level manager in the underwriting department of a large, Mid-West based insurance company I was involved in several employee firings. In all the cases I believe that termination of employment was necessary and justified. That, however, did not make it any easier.

There is one case that especially stands out in my memory. Although termination was definitely warranted and taken only as an extreme last resort after all other corrective measures had failed, the experience still affected me deeply on both a professional and a personal level.

First I should explain that my company is not known for terminating employees. A very traditional company with a patriarchal corporate culture it is still viewed by many as one of the last bastions of employment for life. Although being hired in initially could prove challenging, once on board an employee generally had to work quite hard to be fired. Short of committing some sort of crime or engaging in highly unethical or inappropriate behavior, few associates were ever asked to leave.

However, in the wake of a seemingly ever increasing number of natural disasters including hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires and mounting pressure from various competitors, reducing expenses became paramount. No longer could the company benevolently continue to carry unproductive or inefficient employees in the naive hope that performance problems would somehow fix themselves if we simply waited long enough. It was in this changing corporate climate that this particular termination took place.

It involved a young man who simply couldn't learn the underwriting job. Friendly and likeable, "Daniel" was someone that everyone wanted to succeed, but for whatever reason he simply could not. Underwriters were put through an extensive training course consisting of both classroom and on the job experiences which normally lasted somewhere between 9 and 12 months. Daniel completed his training and was given an underwriting assignment and the complaints began almost immediately. His assigned agency group expressed concerns about paperwork being lost, policies not being issued in a timely manner and misinformation being given over the phone. The concerns apparently escalated to the point where my predecessor made the somewhat unorthodox decision to remove Daniel from his work assignment and have him repeat the training program. This was ostensibly to "give him another chance" because he was a "nice guy with a great attitude". In many other companies his dismal performance would have led to immediate dismissal, but in our organization the idea of firing someone for incompetence seemed to fly in the face of the "organizational nice" phenomenon for which we are apparently quite famous.

When I arrived on the scene as the new Underwriting Section Manager, Daniel had completed his second tour of duty in the underwriting training program and was assigned to a new team, with a new team supervisor and a new group of agents, the theory being, I suppose that all he needed was a "fresh start" and all would be well.Unfortunately, however, the same types of issues began to arise. However, this time our department was undergoing reorganization and there was increasing pressure to reduce staff and expenses. We could no longer afford to carry the "dead wood" no matter how pleasant and likeable it might be. And so the decidedly unpleasant task of determining what to do about Daniel unfortunately fell to me.

In many organizations this might have been simple. There is an employee who cannot effectively perform the job for which he was hired despite having been through the training program twice. He should be terminated, no ifs, ands or buts. However, the "organizational nice" in our company extended to our Human Resources department as well and I was advised that we would need to build a file clearly outlining Daniel's incompetence as well as documenting what the company had done to help him improve. And so we embarked on training round 3, but with specific goals and benchmarks. These would be formally documented if Daniel failed to meet them within the designated time period.

On the surface this might sound like an altruistic, "one last chance" but as time went on I began to see the process as exceedingly cruel. Daniel couldn't meet the benchmarks; we knew that he couldn't. After nearly 3 years in training and miserable failure every time he was assigned to an agency group there was no way he was going to meet those benchmarks. But for 6 months his supervisor and I met with him on a weekly basis to go over his progress, fearing all the while that the outcome of termination was a foregone conclusion.

I often felt sick inside giving this young man the false hope that he might somehow pull out of his "slump" and become a successful employee knowing full well that he simply did not possess the capacity for the work.Finally, the fateful day came and he was summoned to the Human Resource Manager's office. He handled the news relatively well and was calm as the HR rep escorted him back to his cubicle to pack up his personal belongings in full view of his stunned co-workers.

Several months later I heard that his string of bad luck had continued with the death of his mother and the break-up of his marriage and I couldn't help but feel a profound sadness and more than a touch of guilt wondering if there was perhaps something more we could have done. I don't know what ever became of Daniel. I like to think that releasing him from our company allowed him to eventually find his niche in life and that he is now wildly successful in a job that is a perfect fit for him. I do approach my own life and career quite differently now after having gone through that experience of having to terminate him.

I have come to realize that I am not my work. It doesn't pay to become too deeply invested in the 9 to 5 daily grind because jobs can and do disappear in an instant. We must each find our passion in life and we should not hesitate to move on from situations that are clearly not a good fit. In Daniel's case, for example, I can't imagine that he was completely oblivious to the fact that he was not cut out to be an underwriter. And yet he stayed on, hoping perhaps that some sort of miracle would occur. From my perspective I believe that life is simply far too short for that.