How Can You Save a Good Employee? Actions to take.
An employer asks: What should we do with an excellent employee who has an attendance problem? Is it time for the employee to shape up or be terminated? This type of dilemma often faces workplace managers. If a good employee has some faults which keep showing up and interfering with performance, is termination the only option? How can you save a good employee?
Question: We have an employee who is abusing our attendance policy. She is an excellent employee when she is here. But she has an erratic attendance record. We’ve tried a number of things to get her to take responsibility for getting to work when scheduled. We’ve cut her pay. We’ve even put her on unpaid suspension and gotten her to agree in writing she would change. One moment, I want to fire her. The next moment, I want to keep trying to keep her since she shows so much potential when she is here. How can you save a good employee? What should we do?
Answer: Dale Dauten, the “Corporate Curmudgeon” columnist for King Features Syndicate, once gave advice on how he might deal with an employee who had performed well but
who lied about his educational achievement when getting his job. First, he quoted Wayne Dyer, “In a choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.” Then he concluded: “…it is okay to forgive.”
Yes, it is okay to forgive. But from what you describe, it sounds as though you are about to forgive one time too many.
When dealing with an employee who isn’t accepting personal responsibility, what’s right for the employee is for you to show “tough love.” The tough love idea in child rearing is this: The parents enforce tough rules so the child learns there are consequences to her actions. In a case like yours, the kindest thing you can do for this employee is to set standards of performance and behavior and stick to them.
You’re about to go beyond forgiving. You’re close to condoning — and thus encouraging — this employee’s wrong behavior.
Perhaps you’ve been bending your rules hoping she would get her personal life in order. That’s good. That’s being kind. But at a certain point your kindness turns into condoning poor behavior. Ultimately, then by condoning you are doing the employee harm.
Consider also the harm to your business. If the work the employee is doing is critical, you can’t tolerate poor attendance because the important work isn’t getting done. What to do then? If the work is critical, the employee has to shape up immediately. Or you terminate.
If the work is not critical, tolerating the employee’s poor attendance still can have a negative impact. It will in time affect the attitudes of her coworkers. Some may begin mimicking her attendance pattern. They’ll start to think, “If she can get away with it, so can we.” When this begins, you’ll have an even greater challenge on your hands.
What to do: If this employee’s work is not critical, your approach so far is about right. You’ve cut her pay. You’ve put her on unpaid suspension. You’ve gotten her to agree in writing to change. Now, you live up to the agreement. The employee agreed to change, and you agree to terminate her if she did not. So, what to do next: Terminate her. Kindness is good. But tough love is sometimes better. Sometimes, it’s the only form of kindness.
These type of situations are emotional and sometimes hard to do on your own. How can you keep a good employee? If you would like to be able to get help to these and other HR situations that you are dealing with, Contact Vision HR and talk with an HR experts to see if a partnership with Vision HR is right for your business.
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How can you save a good employee ?
Source, Thompson Reuters / Biz actions.
