Fire an Employee With Compassion and Class: 5 Steps To Follow
In over 20 years in business, I’ve never met a single founder who hasn’t had to fire at least one employee.
While the thought may create knots in your stomach, letting an employee go is actually a super valuable skill with further reaching implications than you might think.
Because done wrong, It could crush team morale, compromise data, and even cost you valuable customer accounts.
Breaking up isn’t fun… but it’s a skill that as a founder you need to get skilled at.
In this week’s video, I’ll share 5 steps for firmly (but respectfully) letting an employee go… while setting up all stakeholders for a smooth transition.
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At a high level, here’s how to let an employee go the right way:
- Prep accounts
- Schedule the sit down
- Not a discussion
- Remove access
- Communicate the reason
Of the five, the last one gets the most neglected.
Once they’ve been “let go”, it’s tempting to just move forward and drop it from your mental/emotional bandwidth.
But unless you take a quick 15 mins to inform the rest of your team about the decision, and more importantly, the reasons behind it… you may inadvertently be fueling the rumor mill while planting the seeds for a toxic culture.
At the end of the day, if it’s not working out with an employee you owe it to both THEM and the company to move on gracefully.
You might think that you’re doing them a favor with countless “extra chances’, but it’s likely just your own fear and resistance speaking.
If the writing’s already on the wall, you owe it to everyone involved to move on and let them find a career that they can be a total rockstar at.
Give the episode a full watch here, and then drop me a comment letting me know of any lessons you’ve learnt from letting an employee go.
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Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter @danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.
Originally published at www.danmartell.com on February 4, 2019.
