Differentiating Fixing from Firing Employees - Case Study Example

To Fix or To Fire Them Differentiating Fixing From Firing Employees In order to punish employees that do not meet their minimum expectations, one method is through firing them or placing them on probation. It is common that the work environment encourages both good and bad work. According to Shaer, punishment to employees especially by firing them is much harmful to the company and leads to unsustainable growth. On the other hand, the point made it that it is easier to fix employees than to fire them. For reasons known to the employer, an employee is entitled to meet various standards among them a certain threshold of performance. In this case, based on the fact that employee training and development programs are expensive to sustain especially if the business has a short employee turnover rate. To the company, regular expenses aimed at training employees make it a problem for employers to fire their employees rather than fix them. Fixing an employee involves the provision of counselling and motivation to do their work. During counselling, the author describes a situation where an employer meets with an employee to discuss the employee’s performance. Based on the employee’s input and output, the employer can compare the performance of that particular employee against the standard acceptable levels (11). The employee is then asked to provide a detailed self-analysis regarding the poor performance. If a clear set of reasons is established, the employer is able to make an informed decision to manage the employee such that he/she is able to deal with the factors influencing poor performance to ensure that the employee retains his work and the training and development costs of hiring new employees are managed. Things to Remember When Counseling Employees In the counselling of employees, employers or managers are required to remember various things among them the nature of the job, the performance record of the employee, the current and desired employee motivation, role of management in influencing good or bad performance, and the general welfare of the employee. With reference to employee motivation, managers or employers are required to remember that poor performance may not be caused by the employee. As a matter of fact, employees may lack job satisfaction at the current workplace based on their capabilities and how much they utilize their potential. Additionally, when the company thrives at ensuring that employees meet specific business goals. However, to ensure that the goals are achieved, and development is sustained, employers or managers must ensure that their employees have access to information and resources that support good performance. Additionally, based on Maslow’s hierarchy levels, employees’ esteem is an important input to good performance (15). Esteem is different from motivation as some staff have sufficient motivation to not work. For instance, an employee with a well-paying job and with the support to develop his career may not have the esteem to tackle his responsibilities. However, considering that financial motivation does not result to better esteem, Shaer (15-16) argues that motivation and esteem go together as a job position may provide the desired effect to encourage the employee to be drawn into performing better since the company makes good use of the employee (15-16). Ways for Underperformers to Rationalize Performance For underperforming employees, various ways of rationalizing their performance include denial, acceptance with an element of pointing figures, disqualification of the measurer, and bad luck. Among the types of denials include outright denial of the outcomes arguing that the measure is flawed (23) denial by changing norms involves employees suggesting the measurement with a different measuring tool (23), and denial with bias where employees use prejudice such that they are deliberately looked down at for simply being women/men/black/white. On the other hand, acceptance is also applied as a way of rationalizing poor performance. This rationalization includes acceptance that quotes a different approach regarding how he/she compensates the poor performance and acceptance quoting that there was no reason to give the best short as the employer or company does not deserve it. Another way of rationalizing performance is through the disqualification of the measurer suggesting that the employee surpasses the qualifications of the measurer. General Lessons from Steve Shaer Shaer (15-16) aims at providing insight into the subject of managing human resources. With reference to the non-fruitful performance of employees, the author mentions that a company or an employer would lose funds based on poor management of resources. However, the author does not offer firing of employees as the best or the first considerable decision. In this case, the author aims at balancing the two areas (9-10). The two fields for analyzing performance involve the effects to the company as well as the particular role played by the employees. The author looks at the situation of an underperforming employee as a problem that can be managed to save the employer or the company from losing more funds. Through counselling of employees, an employer can motivate his employees, boost their esteem, and promote their overall performance (15-16). The performance of a trained employee and that a new employee incurs various levels of additional costs that can be managed through fixing current employees. To cut on costs, the author suggests that employers should make use of counselling to establish the cause of poor performance and develop to be better performing employees. The effect of training and developing a new employee involves slow adoption, poor costs’ management, and the training and development program may fail to produce a better performing employee (10). Application of Book Lesson In my working environment, two lessons from the class textbook apply perfectly. Firstly, the role of employees is different from that management and as an employee, I learn that the company depends on specific and strategic deployment of resources among them time and funds. As an employee, time management is a crucial area which eventually affects the overall performance. It is, therefore, applicable to my area of work to ensure that I meet expectation and use the right channels to address issues that may affect performance. An example of an approach to address personal hindrances to good performance is through expressing my issues to the management in order to identify a solution before effects are reflected in the performance. Secondly, the company has its roles to play in promoting employee performance. Among these roles include the responsibility of providing a support system to the employees. Therefore, as an employee, I would address any personal, work-related, or other hindrances with the support system Works Cited Shaer, Steve. Fix Them or Fire Them: Managing, Evaluating, and Terminating Underperforming Employees. Changer Press, 2013. Read More