Permit dialogue, deliberation or re-work

Today let me draw your attention to a bitter but real growing issue in Sri Lanka - that's about firing employees. Culturally, firing is a bad term to use but whatever the term we use, the end game is loss of employment. And making that happen is the toughest and most stressful job or a business leader.

Despite the pain, dismissing an employee can be one of the most important tasks of leadership. It can either be an opportunity to strengthen or build a culture of respect, accountability and trust or can foster a culture of fear and secrecy.

Other employees are watching your actions, so you need to be mindful of not only 'what you do' but 'how you do' it as well. You are shaping your organisation's culture whether you take action or ignore the problem.

The real questions are; what do you want your organisation's level of performance to be? Can you build competitive advantage with employees who pull in the opposite direction and continue to bear the cost?

Compelling reasons

An employee uses drugs or alcohol while on the job, engages in illegal activities, blatantly dishonest, disrespectful, steals from the company, grossly insubordinate, consistently falls well below performance expectations, doesn't respond to training and coaching, and divulges sensitive information to competitors - then you have no choice but to make the employee go.

In such situations, you must act decisively. Once you decide to lay off an employee, procrastination will only make a bad situation worse. You are paid by the company to pay the good employees in return for the value created by each of them. You have no right to jeopardise your company's success or your employees' success, by retaining an underperforming employee or an employee who is a barrier to succeed.

You are accountable for business results and people - so it's a delicate issue to deal with - a double edged sword to play with. In any business action there can be a margin of error. However, making a mistake in this activity can carry serious irreparable damages in terms of organisation reputation and various liabilities. So leaders need to take all the precautionary measures.

Based on my experience locally, the most common mistakes leaders often make when dealing with a potential dismissal include: Treating layoffs as a legalistic and mechanical problem. If you are only worried about having filed the right paperwork and getting through it without having to face litigation, you've probably been thinking of it as a chance to get rid of a thorn on your side, instead of thinking about the best way to solve the problem for everyone's benefit.

People issues can never be mechanical. If there is one thing to do better, it would be effective communication from the start to the finish. Allow enough time for options, dialogue, deliberation or re-work.

Waiting until a crisis occurs

If you can recognise and address the problem early, before frustration and resentment are high, the chances of success are exponentially greater. Leaders should have the foresight to anticipate and take proactive steps to avoid business distraction and employee disappointment.

Making decisions

Leaders shouldn't fire people based on personality clashes or annoying behaviour. It's wrong from all angles. It's got to be based on business impact. When the decision is fact-based, you remove many of the emotional stresses that arise when sitting down to consider your options.

An employee having to leave the organisation due to no fault of his or hers is a crime and such an employee can be like a wounded animal not knowing how to react and consequences can be severe. On the other hand, a leader has no right to pay employees on sympathetic grounds. Doing it the 'right way' at the 'right time' for the 'right reasons' is the way to go. Having to fire employees due to wrong business strategy or poor decision making by the leaders should be zero in the ideal world.