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Do not terminate an employee unless there is a signed written detailed warning already sitting in his employee’s personnel file. When you fire someone, they should not be surprised. Why? They should know they already had problems doing their job from previous discussions the supervisor has had with them. Those discussions need to be in writing if you are serious and want him to change and improve. When you give him a clear concise warning, give him a written dated copy. Ask him to sign and acknowledge his problem. If you do not take it seriously, do not write him up. Also, do not try to fire him thinking it will be easy or without potential problems. Not everybody leaves without a fight, especially when never forewarned. You owe the employee a written warning.
If you do not take his performance problems seriously, neither will he. The problem employee should already be very familiar with what he is doing wrong in his position. He should thoroughly realize from your reviews, discussions and analysis of his shortcomings as measured against his job description that he is not currently doing a satisfactory job.
Employees who have work problems should be told about them as soon as possible. Tell new hires what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. They should be given feedback and follow-up as soon as possible. You invested the time to look for them and hire them so take the time to train them. They should be told they must improve or they are going to lose their job. You should have talked to them numerous times so their eventual termination will not be a complete surprise.
If the terminated employee was completely shocked that he was fired, you, the manager, are to blame. If you provided him a written warning, he can’t claim ignorance. Employees should not be shocked when they are fired if you are doing your job as the supervisor. If this reaction occurs, you failed to warn him about the problem. You failed to tell him what you wanted him to do, what he did wrong, how critical his mistakes were and what he needed to do to correct his key problems. You failed as a manager and cost your firm a lot of money when you wasted the company’s time with this employee you refused to train.
If you failed with this one, you have probably failed with others and this is very costly. Your ability to be an effective supervisor should be seriously questioned. Understand your verbal warnings may not suffice with some employees.
You need to give feedback to employees regardless of how uncomfortable you are with doing that. They need to be instructed about what you want and what you expect them to do on the job. Train them and take as long as it takes out of your daily schedule to ensure they are picking up on the lessons and issues you discuss with them frequently.
You want to document what is wrong with the performance regardless of how little time the employee has been with the company. Documenting problems and addressing them to the employee is good company policy. It protects the company legally plus gives valuable feedback to the new guy who needs it. Tell the new guy what he is doing wrong. Be honest and forthright about it and tell him you have to let him know what he is doing wrong because you want him to succeed and not make the same mistakes you made when you started.
Tell him what he is doing wrong immediately. Talk to the new hire and do not hesitate. He will be a much better employee and you will not waste company money going through multiple people because you were negligent about training each one of them.
