Asking An Employee To Leave The Company
avc.com
avc.com
I cofounded a company and hired a friend who moved across the country. I even went to the mat with another cofounder who questioned whether he was the right fit. Turns out he wasn't. It wasn't his fault. He's very talented, but he duplicated existing skillsets (mine most of all), and the hat we needed him to wear was one that he'd never worn before. And this increased the stress of his job, which only made it even harder for him to be productive.
Fortunately, the other founders agreed to be generous about offering him an exit (in line with Fred's advice), and so when he and I had the conversation it was much easier for his departure to be a mutual decision and we've retained our friendship.
I would never go into a conversation like this unprepared and rely on the assumption it will be easy or mutual. And I haven't had to do this often enough to know if this was a rare outcome. But if you look at it from both sides and are willing to be generous with the solution, then it is possible that sometimes the "mutual decision" really is a mutual one.
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Honestly, this seems a bit spineless. Don't describe it as "asking them to leave" if in actuality the employee has no choice. If you're telling them to leave and to not show up for work again, call it what it is, either a 'firing', 'redundancy' or 'letting go'. Anything else is just dishonest.
In my previous career path we eventually faced massive lay-offs/redundancy across the company. New tech had made our jobs practically obsolete and the layoffs represented an opportunity for me to move on to better things, which is fair enough.
However, it always annoyed me how the various communications from Head Office were phrased as 'we deeply regret asking you to leave', when it was so clear that they were delighted to be rid of us, and there was no 'asking' being done at any point.
"As for the received email, I had just enough time to reply "If you put as much effort into the rest of your work as you did this email, you'd still be working here" before the guy left."
One of these things is not like the other...
That said, I wouldn't have sent the email myself.
Some people will know why things are not working out, and for them, you don't need to say anything about cause. It would, for example, just re-open a wound.
Others will press to know, and it's best to have something short and clear to say, say that thing, and then elaborate no more. You can't get in an argument or go into the fact-finding rabbit hole about it (the outcome is settled).
If you don't have a reason, you will look like a fool, and this will tend to lead to a bad outcome.
Fred's further advice of getting right to the point and giving them honest, clear reasons is spot on. He's not advocating for bullshitting the employee; he's advocating for not being a dick when there's no reason for it.
I disagree. Using too rosy a term for something that's very bad for the recipient might be perceived as disingenuous or just lacking balls to tell the unpleasant truth.
Maybe more of a Hobson's choice.
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave" seems to be the sort of thing said by bartenders/bouncers when you've been cut off and you're demanding that one last beer. Or by a police officer who presents you with the choice of walking out on your own, or or getting arrested.
"John, due to reasons X and Y you will no longer be employed with this company."
If I had to choose, I'd rather hear something like that.
"I can quit, or you can fire me. But I'm not quitting."
With the latter, you can qualify for unemployment benefits. With the former, you get nothing. See the difference?
Also keep in mind that there's a difference between what you might say to the employee, and what you subsequently report to others. Fred talks about how you need to be sensitive to how the news affects others on the team. And so you might have a direct conversation with an employee who warrants firing, but you may prefer to tell other employees, investors, or the public that this person was "asked to leave."
I imagine that if it is their fault and they screwed up, "you're fired" is the appropriate thing to say, and generally pretty instantly.
The impact comes not from what they tell you, it's more about what they'll tell the next company when they call to ask about you (though if the two don't match up, you run into a lot of problems).
If the company has documentation to back up their side - something like "he/she was found asleep at his desk several times (dates A, B, C), was given both verbal (on date D) and written (on date E) reprimands, continued to sleep at his/her desk (dates F and G), and was let go on date H" - then I don't believe that there's a law that stops them from doing so.
Yes, they may get sued - but they're likely to win the lawsuit (especially if they required the employee to sign the written warning, so he/she can't claim ignorance).
How can I help someone who's been fired bounce back?
What should someone who's been fired tell potential employers why they're no longer with a previous employer?
I'm trying to help a friend, but I've never gone thru this, so I feel powerless.
Getting fired is kind of like having someone you care about die, in that you go through Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
I think the most difficult part for me was a loss of identity. I had associated myself so deeply with the product that we were working on that once I was asked to leave, I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. It may have been particularly significant for me since I had built the product originally, but anyone who cares deeply about their work attaches some portion of their identity to their job.
The key thing to remember is that a job is not a career, and a career is not a life. You had a life and a career before your job, and you'll have a life and a career after. Spend the time off doing things that give you positive energy -- for me, it was reading and biking. Give yourself some time to recover, and you'll be better for it.
As far as what to tell prospective employers, I think transparency is always the best approach. Be honest about why it didn't work out, but don't spend your time talking negatively about the company that fired you. Unless you got fired for embezzling money or something, the root cause was some sort of incompatibility between you and the company you worked for. Just like breaking up with a significant other, there's nothing shameful about it -- if it didn't work out, it didn't work out.
For what it's worth, I personally wouldn't hesitate to hire someone who had been fired (unless it was a clear pattern of extremely negative behavior). A strong will is necessary to do great things, and strong-willed people are often difficult for companies to corral. :)
There is virtually no answer to that question that makes you sound like a better candidate than you were before it was asked. I'd be strongly inclined to say some variant of "It's a tough economy.", which is non-specific, virtually guaranteed to be a contributing factor, and avoids faulting either party.
The canonical answer is some variant of "We weren't a good fit for each other." Then, again, refocus the conversation on how you'll be a great fit with interviewer's company.
There's just no percentage here for you. (An American idiom: basically, no outcome of this line of thinking is going to help you.) Just handwave towards the economy and start talking about happy subjects.
My first reaction to this was to think that someone could somehow turn this into a positive if they could solve this dilemma as in "No! I was fired for (insert reason) but I overcame...and now I"m ..."
But then I realized that similar to breaking up in a relationship if you reveal the reason to your new partner and say that you learned from it, and aren't the same person, all that will do is alert the other party to be especially vigilant to the particular behavior, and in fact then you are automatically disadvantaged. Everything you do is magnified greatly. "Oh boy. Here we go again just like their old job"
About the only thing I can think of (and in fact recommend this when trying to get rid of a sales person) is to produce a reason that can't happen again. Such as "I was fired because I had to take care of my sick mother. But she died and I now live alone and don't have any other relatives". Etc.
The only recommendation is for the person not to give up, start looking right away - if this person is a developer, there are so many opportunities right now that it shouldn't be hard to find a position regardless of your work experience - though depending on your locality it might require moving. For example, New York is booming with tech jobs at the moment.
Just some perspective: Not sure about the EU in general, but in Greece at least, asking someone to leave the company is synonymous to forcefully making one quit. This arm-twisting has far-reaching implications for the person leaving the company; Namely no unemployment benefits or severance package. I wouldn't want to work for such a company and would actively discourage others to do so.
Just wanted to add some cultural perspective; I am aware the situation in the US (and the author's) is totally different.
Do you talk about the situation? And how much of is it contingent on the circumstances of their leaving (obviously a reference would be out of the question if the firing was for severe misconduct)?
In some states, the only thing you can do is confirm the employee worked for you during a time range. Saying anything else is actionable by the former employee. It is really important to know the law in your locale.
It is actually safest legally just to say your company policy is to give dates only. If you took legal action against the employee (e.g. theft) then the new employer will find it on a background check. Their failure to do a background check is their fault.
Anything negative at all, and a lot of positive things could be interpreted as partially negative, exposes you to risk if the employee doesn't get the job.
I am not a lawyer.
There are various ways to get around this when getting or giving references.
Outside of that, the best thing to is to confirm employment with dates. Oddly enough, some people will list a reference from where they were fired for misconduct. I'd bet that said person doesn't even understand what constitutes misconduct, why they were fired and how to avoid it in the future.
Call or email, leave a message asking to be called back IFF the candidate was exceptionally strong. Assuming you aren't a competitor, you'll probably get a call back if true. If the guy was meh, it is a nice way to pocket veto.
For when you do employee referrals, if employees are getting pressured by lames to refer them, let them do no-op referrals. Default bring meaningless, and "strong referral" being a real referral. Google, Facebook, etc do this.
It would be exceedingly difficult to successfully sue someone for failing to return a call or email from a random outsider. Plausible deniability.
This is also one of the cases where being part of a "mafia" is awesome -- you can actually call up and get unvarnished opinions, or at least, cagey "I don't think I would" "That might be difficult" etc.
Your suggestion would basically just screw over any person whose boss had more pressing matters on his plate.
I think it's quite amusing to see everyone saying the recommended advice is to just confirm dates and title. It is, but only if you're implying that you have nothing positive to say about the employee.
Potential employers call HR to confirm dates and titles. They call former managers/supervisors to confirm other aspects of a potential hire's work history, i.e., to confirm the potential hire's alleged accomplishments while working for your company.
There are laws in most states saying that employers cannot impair a terminated employee's post-employment job hunt. This does not mean you can't talk honestly about the employee to another potential employer if you're asked. It does mean that you can't lie about the employee in a way that harms their job prospects (legally, this includes exaggeration).
Think about it folks: if there were laws saying that you couldn't talk honestly about former employees, no one would ever ask for references, especially not corporate HR departments, because it would be illegal and they would be exposing themselves to serious civil liability. The law usually is logical, if you know what the logic behind a particular law is.
That said, I'm glad a lawyer is here to say that you're allowed to talk honestly about an employee's work history and that you're not limited to date/title/pay. That seems to be the most pervasive job-search myth I run into.
Most employees in this situation will ask for reasons. Have them lined up in advance and be clear and crisp when describing the reasons. The reasons for a split do not have to be the employee's fault. They can, and often are, the company's fault. In startups, employees are almost always at will and it is the CEO's right to ask anyone to leave the company for any reason. So just be as honest as possible, be clear and crisp about the reasons, and don't turn this into a long involved discussion.