Written by
Jay Goltz It was a blog post in which there was a follow up:
In my last post, I wrote about my desire to have happy people working for me. Perhaps I could have been clearer when I said that I fire unhappy people. Instead of unhappy, I probably should have said disrespectful (to others, not me), incompetent, unreasonable, undependable, irresponsible, unproductive, dysfunctional (I did say that one), angry, whiny or mean — and beyond a manager’s ability to repair (actually, I said that, too). I think most people understood the context of my post, but there were a few comments or questions that required a response.
First of all, more than one commenter substituted the word “cheerful” for happy. I don’t care about cheerful. I care about the list above. Am I sure that my employees are not just acting happy? No! I lost my happy meter. But if they are just acting, that’s O.K., too. Not preferred, but O.K.
When you are in the middle of a recession, the true character of an organization comes out. How is the communication? Are cutbacks handled in a fair and reasonable way? What is being done to react to the new economics? At my company, I appreciate the fact that everyone is working together to get back on track and that my managers can spend all of their time and energy improving operations instead of dealing with issues that cannot be fixed.
I also appreciate that I have good, hard-working people with good attitudes who appear to like working for me. Am I delusional? Maybe. Perception is my reality. They have been here an average of nine years, many more than 20. My first business, Artists Frame Service, is now 20 times the size of the average picture-framing company, making it the largest in the industry. The fact that I have happy employees is not unrelated.
In response to some of the commenters, let me emphasize that I do understand, as I said in the post, that there are many bad bosses. I get it. And firing is certainly not a cure for bad management. It was suggested that we “first try direct communication with the offending party.” I am sorry if anyone got the impression that my managers and I are running around firing people on a whim. As I wrote, we counsel, we listen, and we listen some more when employees raise problems and issues. I encourage and appreciate complaints. If I fired everyone who had complained at some point, there would be very few people here. I would have had to fire myself.
We get complaints of all kinds, and we deal with them — whether it is that the toilet paper is too rough, the lighting is bad or that a manager is not doing a good job. Some complaints are legitimate, some are not, some are about issues that can’t be fixed. If there is a problem with something that someone is doing, we sit down, in private, and discuss the problem. We will do this three or four times. But I have learned that there is a point of no return. No return on your time and energy, and no return on the damage done to customers and employees.
Some people need to work somewhere else, usually to the relief of everyone else. We document. We have a witness. We don’t yell. We also don’t try to win the argument when the employee says it isn’t his fault.
Keep in mind, this blog is written for small businesses. I understand that big business has many different issues when it comes to firing people. Many corporations have legal departments that have no responsibility for productivity, corporate culture, customer service or profits, for that matter. That’s their problem.
Small companies usually don’t have legal departments. They probably should have a labor lawyer, one who counsels on how to manage and fire people legally. Don’t ever want to get sued? Don’t ever fire anyone — and live with the problems. I might add, I have never been sued for firing someone. And I’m tired of hearing people use the desire to avoid lawsuits as an excuse for not taking responsibility for running a company in a productive manner.
It isn’t always fun or easy being the boss. Me? I’m happy. My employees appear to be happy. Then again, maybe I am delusional. Works for me.