Why we tolerate despicable employees

Dan Kennedy argues that many busi­ness owners inter­act with their sub­or­di­nates like spine­less wimps. They hold off as long as pos­si­ble from firing inef­fec­tive employ­ees, even those who are down­right detri­men­tal to the business. Dan chalks it up to a lack of char­ac­ter and reluc­tance to make tough decisions. But, in my view, there’s more to it than that.

Why do we resist letting go of even a blatantly weak employee?

Firstly, of course, there’s the need to deliver unpleas­ant news face-to-face to the employee. This requires a cer­tain amount of psy­cho­log­i­cal energy and bravery. This is the obvi­ous reason that Kennedy points out. But let’s delve deeper. What else are we afraid of?

We’re afraid of the neces­sity to find a replacement. Oh! That’s a much more seri­ous problem. Hiring per­son­nel is a headache for almost every manager. Looking for a replace­ment will require the man­ager’s energy in any case, even if the task is outsourced.

There’s no guar­an­tee that the new hire will be better than the old one. Or that they won’t leave on their own accord after a couple of weeks. And that this vicious cycle might not have to be repeated all over again.

Newbies need to be trained. This can be a quite non-trivial task if there’s no estab­lished train­ing process in the company. And this is mainly pos­si­ble only when the main busi­ness processes in the com­pany are regulated. Yet, process reg­u­la­tion is another major headache for managers.

If we’re talk­ing about a small busi­ness owner, they fear some­thing else. That the dis­grun­tled employee will go to com­peti­tors or even set up a com­pet­ing com­pany themselves.

Now, the sit­u­a­tion is clearer. We’ve iden­ti­fied four more sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems asso­ci­ated with replac­ing an employee. It’s now easier to under­stand that a busi­ness­man might not be as soft as they appear, they simply have an instinct for these things — a gut feel­ing, if you will — but they might not have the words to artic­u­late it.

How to build a business that isn’t hostage to sloppy employees

Here’s a basic game plan:

1. Devise a hiring process that min­i­mizes resource expenditure. Automate the col­lec­tion of resumes and sim­plify their processing.
2. Minimize the “expert deter­mi­na­tion of key can­di­date com­pe­ten­cies”. In plain lan­guage: don’t rely on the HR man­ager’s hunches. Instead, rely on test­ing and eval­u­at­ing can­di­dates under con­di­tions that closely sim­u­late the actual work environment.
3. Take on more people for train­ing than you plan to keep on the job.
4. Establish a train­ing process. To begin with, write a train­ing pro­gram that includes 10–15 basic skills the employee must master during their pro­ba­tion period.
5. And of course, grow a back­bone and have the courage to fire some­one if you don’t feel like going to the office when that par­tic­u­lar employee is on shift.

I’m pur­posely leav­ing out process reg­u­la­tion, as it’s a rather vast topic. But it has to be done anyway, as it’s cru­cial not only for employee train­ing but also for over­all busi­ness development.

The fear of payback

A sep­a­rate issue is the fear of employ­ees “jump­ing ship” to competitors. Understand this:

If you behave uneth­i­cally towards your employ­ees, they’ll rec­i­p­ro­cate in kind.

Avoid cheat­ing, under­pay­ing (it’s not uncom­mon for an employee to receive less than promised after a month’s work), and the like. This is a sure­fire way to breed hostility.

Moreover, there’s a simple way to pro­tect against the “poach­ing” of your business. Divide the respon­si­bil­i­ties of your employ­ees in such a way that no single one has com­plete over­sight of all com­pany processes. Separate mar­ket­ing, sales, and procurement. Without know­ing the key processes of one of these areas, it will be quite chal­leng­ing to create a sim­i­lar business. The only person who could poten­tially do this would be a hired direc­tor, and you should be very care­ful when hiring for this role.

Lastly, if your busi­ness does not create unique value for the con­sumer, and merely sur­vives on some arrange­ments or the fact that others simply don’t know that such a thing is pos­si­ble, you will find it chal­leng­ing to keep it afloat. If your busi­ness can be copied by a reg­u­lar employee earn­ing min­i­mum wage, it’s worth con­sid­er­ing: maybe you should be doing some­thing else?

In sum­mary, I’d like to say that all of this requires sig­nif­i­cant man­age­r­ial resources and the right busi­ness model that allows for paying good salaries to employees. It’s not easy, which is why most com­pa­nies do things differently. But then again, most don’t rise to the top. By definition.

The major­ity (and I must admit, I belonged to this group for a long time) pay low wages, and as a result, don’t have a line of qual­i­fied can­di­dates eager to work for them. The ones who show up for inter­views are the ones who just got fired or are unem­ploy­able elsewhere. They’re unmo­ti­vated, illit­er­ate, and most impor­tantly — not loyal to you. At any given moment, they could bolt for a more attrac­tive opportunity. So the last and per­haps most cru­cial point: pay decent wages, so that you are the one choos­ing, not the one being chosen.