Employee
has been in the company from the early days, is well liked, is socially
very active, organizes company events, trips... but is underperfoming
in his actual job and doesn't show an appetite to improve. Letting this
person go could damage the culture and potentially trigger some backlash.
If
you are building a high-performance company, you cannot have people
that are consistently low performers. So it is incumbent on you to find a
good role for the person where they can thrive and be seen in the
company as a high performer. The biggest problem with low performers,
even very well intentioned low performers, is that often drive your
highest performers to leave the company.
Every
high-performance team is the Venn diagram overlap of: employees have
high expectations of themselves AND they have high expectations of the
other employees. Hard to have very have high expectations of others in
the team if there are glaring low performers in the midst.
If
you are striving to build a high-performance company, you should first
try to giving low performers a new role. Maybe this person might not be a
good fit in his current role but might be good as the company’s office
manager or HR director. Those are really important roles to fill. If the
person is smart, hard-working, and motivated … always best to try to
find a good role for a person first rather than letting them go.
If
there is no alternative role for this person (or after moving them,
they are still low performers), you need to give the person a fair
severance package and help them find another job that will be a better
fit for them. While it could be a short-term culture hit, it will be a
very big long-term culture boost. It will clearly message that you are
serious about winning.
Remember,
high-performance companies are not families where you you are related to
people forever. Great companies are more like professional sports
teams. Imagine if the team doctor was performing well below expectations
and causing player injuries … eventually you would find a replacement
even if they were extremely well liked.
Note:
if you are building a nice lifestyle business (and not a
high-performance company), having a lower performing person might be ok.
Lifestyle businesses are more like community softball leagues than
professional sports teams — in those cases winning isn’t everything, it
is how people play the game.
The other
thing to think about is someone that is high-performing but has a
negative effect on culture. These people need to be let go immediately.
While they seem to be high-performing when measured individually, they
are often low-performing when measured on the impact they have on all
those around them.
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