This can seem difficult to get right – exactly how much evidence do you need before you can legally fire someone? Obviously, you can not fire someone just because you don’t like them. Nor can you fire someone because the organisation needs to save money (that is redundancy) but you can fire someone if they are not completing their job to the standard the organisation requires or if they consistently display a poor, disrespectful or negative attitude.

The legal bods will want to be sure you ‘act reasonably at all times’ – this means keeping an open mind, conducting objective and, if possible, impartial investigations before taking formal action. Never be tempted to fire someone in the heat of the moment, even under the most severe provocation. If you think that it would be safer, or it would aid the investigation, if the individual is not in the workplace then suspended them on full pay whilst the investigation is carried out. However, be sure this is for as short a period of time as possible and that you keep in regular communication with them. Remember, you may be required to demonstrate that you have been ‘acting reasonably at all times’ before an Industrial Tribunal and this is easy to do so when you take a breath, pause, and think things through before taking any action.

However, what I am currently witnessing, particularly in the public sector, is an imbalance towards looking after the rights of the individual BEFORE looking after the rights of the manager and/or organisation. So I think it is very important to stress one key point about the level of evidence that is legally required in order to fire someone. In a court of law, when an individual’s liberty is at stake, the prosecution is required to provide ‘evidence beyond reasonable doubt’. But, fortunately, this degree of proof is NOT required for a company to dismiss an individual. All the organisation is required to provide is evidence that ‘on the balance of probability’ they are a poor performing individual. Provided the organisation, and the managers within it, conduct thoughtful and truthful appraisals with accurate records and gain evidence from a number of different sources this is simple and easy to provide.

So you do not need to provide absolute proof of an individual’s poor performance before dismissing them. You only need to provide evidence that ‘on the balance of probability’ they have shown themselves to be a poor employee. Whew!! Now, be sure that all your managers AND staff know of this important distinction. It could make life easier for everyone and may bring some important reality into the thinking and actions of some individuals!

This is a different type of blog contribution than normal – prompted by attending an amazing conference yesterday. I had the thrill and privilege of hearing inspirational social change activists and entrepreneurs speaking about their life, their motivations, their considerable achievements and the lessons they learnt on the way. There was so much I took away from the day but overwhelmingly it was the exuberant, passionate and purposeful way in which they lived their lives. In short they were living 100%. All of it, completely, the painful challenges as well as the soaring achievements.

I believe everyone should live a full life. And this is why I am committed to educating and supporting managers to undertake honest and skilful Performance Management Conversations. Every time I walk around an organisation or business I witness people living small, unrewarding, non-productive and saddening lives. And not one single person deserves that reality.

Yet we are all capable of experiencing this sad life – a personal prison constructed out of fear, doubt, lack of confidence, a sense of entrapment, low expectations, ignorance of our strengths, lack of passion, lack of purpose and the wearing, daily sense of grind that living can become.

Slowly, over time, we become embittered, cynical, tired, angry and turn into a manager’s nightmare. We behave and perform poorly. And the version of reality we experience is confirmed when no-one notices, no-one seems concerned, no-one has a conversation starting with ‘What is going on? What is wrong? What needs to change for you to gain enjoyment and reward from your work?’

Many managers are dubious about undertaking this type of conversation. Yet, not to do so results in a poor team, poor results and a lost life. Starting this conversation is saying ‘I notice, this matters and something needs to change’. Some people are not practised with change, are frighten of it, and will not do so until they are forced to. Dismissal is sometimes the lengths a manager needs to take in order to say ‘You deserve, and are capable of, so much more than this’.

Questions about how to do this? Contact me here and learn how to liberate lives.

And curious about who are already living their lives at 100%? They were: Sam Roddick, daughter of Anita and founder of Coco de Mer; Jeremy Gilley, a man who achieved one day of peace in Afghanistan this year and founder of Peace One Day; Marc Koska OBE, inventor of the auto disable syringe saving thousands of lives, check the amazing statistics of his work here; Dr Rohan Weerasinghe, a man of amazing energy and insights; Steve Bolton, property millionaire after taking the TV show Friends as his business inspiration; Simon Woodroffe OBE, founder of Yo! Sushi who spoke with great honesty; and finally the man who put the conference together, Daniel Priestly of Triumphant Events.

When I talk with managers during my workshops I often hear ‘X has switched off but as they have less than 2 yrs before retirement it is not worth the hassle and upset of getting them to improve their performance’. To my mind this approach never has been a strong management solution.   It gives the workforce a clear demonstration that in certain circumstances you can ‘get away’ with doing very little, to say nothing of irritating good performing staff who find themselves making up for a slacker who continues to bank the same salary as them. Basically, this approach could lose you the respect of your team.

But things have now changed.  Retirement no longer offers the manager an easy solution to difficult or poor performing staff as new legislation means that statutory retirement will not exist beyond 6th April 2011. This is the last date that an employer can provide an employee with the minimum 6 mths notice of retirement.

So what now are the options left to you as an employer?

You can included a fixed retirement date in your Contract of Employment BUT you need to be able justify the selected age. Selecting 60 and 65 just because this is when the state pension starts paying out will not suffice.  Doing this would leave you open to possible action under the Age Discrimination legislation introduced in 2006.   An example where a fixed contractual age for retirement would be deemed allowable is the fire service retiring active firemen in their 50s due to the physicality of the work.

So what is the new procedure for staff to retire?  Simply, an employee resigns when they wish to retire. And be warned the CIPD estimate that 41% of staff will select to remain in employment beyond the traditional retirement ages of 60 and 65.

So in the future the only way in which an employee can leave employment will be:
-   sickness, capability or death
-   redundancy
-   resignation
-   dismissal for conduct, capability or performance

This means that effective performance management is even more crucial. All managers need to start conversations with questionable staff NOW otherwise they may remain with you for many years to come! And if you doubt your own, or your staff’s, ability to undertake these conversations get in contact with me here today and become skilled and confident to undertake even the most difficult staffing issue.

The first thing is to relax and take an objective view of what is going on and take comfort from the fact that it is rarely a personal dislike of you – much more often it is a response to the job role that you hold. Easy and logical to say but still frustrating and demoralising to experience.

So what to do? How can you resolve this situation?

I guess, to be fair, you just need to check out if there is any justification behind your team members’ comments and responses. Find a trusted and experienced friend, work colleague, mentor or coach, one that will tell you the truth, and discuss the situation fully with them.

To attempt to improve the situation it helps to understand why staff may be acting in such a destructive way. Individuals can treat you, the manager, aggressively because they sub-consciously formed a negative opinion of authority figures early in their life (from parents, teachers, or former bosses). They now treat all authority figures as being the same whether they are or not. Psychologists call this transference, the transfer of feelings and emotions created from an experience with one person to another. Of course, taking this approach becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, their poor behaviour and attitude is likely to produce a tough managerial response from the boss which then re-enforces their opinion of bosses!! Whew, what a depressing circle of behaviour to be trapped within!

However, you can break the pattern. This means, despite the provocation to act as they expect you to act, behaving as you would do with one of your most positive employees – genuinely respecting and valuing them as such. This can, sometimes, produce startling results where the employee that no manager wanted to take off your hands (and you tried!) can become one of your stars. It is worth trying and if it works great. And if it does not at least you know you were not provoked into behaving as the manager from hell.

If you do not get a positive change then it is time to review the situation. Sometimes you are dealing with issues that are so deep and so established that there is very little that you can have an impact on.

Do, however, take action. Do not allow yourself to be effectively bullied by one of your subordinates. What action to take is very dependent upon the specific situation you find yourself in. Ideally you will have other managers and an HR team to discuss the situation with or, if you do not know where to start, or have no HR department to speak with, be sure to gain the support you need and contact us here.

Firstly, congratulations on your promotion!  If this is your first role as a manager you are now at the start of an exciting development in your career.  And the first set of skills to master is how to manage your team when they use to be your colleagues and friends.   Here are some tips to help you in your transition:

The very first thing to recognise is that true friends will celebrate your promotion and will be respectful and understanding of the two roles you now hold.  If others feel ‘upset’ when you exercise your managerial position I would question whether they are a friend.  Maybe they were hoping that you would place friendship above your increased responsibilities, sacrificing your professional standards for their benefit.  Unfortunately, some friendships will probably be lost, or changed, but the true ones will remain.

Be clear which role you are holding any one time.  Use the phrases ‘Speaking as your manager ….’, or ‘As a friend ….’ when there is the possibility of confusion.  For greater clarity you may wish to maintain a clear line between the two roles by only conducting managerial conversations in formal workplace locations whilst keeping friendship conversations for the coffee machine or out of work.  If someone introduces a conversation in the wrong location say ‘That is really interesting, can you tell me more when …’ Taking this approach can be useful to clarify your new status when you are first promoted and you may wish to relax it once your new position is well known and accepted.

As a manager you will now be included in some discussions that should not be shared with your reports.  Learning to keep confidential knowledge to yourself is important and your new colleagues and bosses will certainly need to know that they can trust you.  I know of one individual who was promoted and then subsequently demoted because of their inability to keep confidences – not a good experience for anyone to go through just for the inability to keep quiet!

Although some friendships will continue you will not be able to offload all of your stresses with them in the way you used to.  They do not share your experience of being a new manager nor can they share the confidential information you now have access to.  Therefore take steps to make friends with your new managerial colleagues as they will be able to offer you much needed support and have plenty of valuable advice and experience to share.

And one final tip – do not be tempted to get drunk with your reports, even if they are still your friends.  It is hard to respect someone as your manager when you have had to pick them up off the floor and persuade a taxi to take them home!  To say nothing of the stupid things that can be said and done when drink has been flowing.  So go out, have a drink or two (maybe three!) but remember to go home early and thereby retain your new managerial dignity!

Imagine the scenario – you are 62 yrs old with only 3 years to retirement. You have seen older colleagues ‘lift their foot off the peddle’ as they approached retirement and consequently either do nothing for 3 years or be ‘persuaded’ to take early retirement with the appropriate financial compensation. So why would you continue to work hard?

Is this the reality you, as the manager, want to create in your organisation? Allowing it to be expected and OK for older staff to drift and coast down to their retirement party? Resulting in the organisation paying a salary for no return and having a negative impact on younger staff who see them ‘getting away with it’?

But how can you create a different reality, how do you effectively performance manage staff close to retirement?

First, it is always worth considering the reality of the other person – in this case what the pre-retirement employee is experiencing. The closest most of us have to something similar is resigning and working out a notice period.   Most certainly I have found it difficult to motivate myself during the last months and I have witnessed others struggling to keep their commitment to a professional standard. The difference here is that a pre-retirement employee has 2 – 3 years to work through as opposed to 1 – 3 months! Suddenly it is not so surprising that work commitment falls off before retirement.

Do not give up! There are ways to maintain, or even increase, their motivation levels:

1. Talk to the individual about their legacy, leaving something behind that they would feel proud of achieving – either a specific project or training a replacement with their valuable skills and knowledge.
2. Paint a picture of their retirement party. State that you want colleagues to being genuine about missing them and thanking them for what they have contributed rather than being privately relieved that they are leaving.
3. Talk about the demoralising effect on them of ‘going through the motions’ for 3 years – that no-one deserves that draining and depressing experience, and certainly not them. You want their last years to be their most rewarding years!
4. Show your appreciation for their expertise and experience. Show that you value their contribution. Ask them what they would consider to be the most valuable improvement they could make to business before they leave.

Do not expect this to be a one hit resolution! Conversations with one individual, who was settling for an ‘OK job’ for his last four years of work, lasted 9 months before he applied for his ‘ideal job’ within the company. It took some time to get over his ‘What’s the point?’, ‘Why bother?’ attitude. However, gentle persistence in not allowing him to drift resulted in him being re-invigorated with real job satisfaction whilst the organisation received a valuable contribution from him.

Lastly, if working with them to lift their motivation levels does not work and they continue to produce poor work, or display a negative attitude, seriously consider formal disciplinary action as you would do for any employee. You may not have the timescale to gain a result with this individual but consider the message taking such action provides to the rest of the workforce. Simply put, that you expect a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and if you do not receive it you take action.

You want your team to feel that you understand them, you want them to be able to talk to you about anything, you want to be seen as a member of the team, willing to get your hands dirty along with everyone else. You don’t want to seen as one of those ‘distant, uncaring’ managers. You want to be their friend as well as their manager.

Although the reasons behind this approach is laudable it is dangerous to forget that a manager is often required to do what a friend would find difficult to do. In these constrained economic times that might include making the hard decision about selecting people for redundancy. Or, more positively, deciding on ‘rewards’ such as pay rises, promotions and, finally, let’s not forget the managers’ responsibility of giving necessary critical feedback.

Some employees are very keen to mould you, as their manager, into also being their friend. Friends are supportive and understanding if things go wrong. Friends defend and look after friends. Friends will make a personal sacrifice on behalf of a friend. You can see how this creates a sense of safety and comfort for the individual. In the worse case scenario it can mean that they are able to sit back confident and secure that whatever they do will be forgiven by you!

Don’t jeopadise your professional role by attempting to be a friend AND a manager.

The question therefore is – how to be a professional manager and yet still gain all the benefits that being viewed as a friend would give? There is a valuable distinction that helps managers to get the balance right: ‘As a manager you may not be liked in what you do, but you can be respected by the way in which you do it.’ Change is not always liked – who likes redundancy programs? But the way in which these necessary changes are communicated and implemented can be respected.

Respect is a valuable thing to work towards achieving as a manager. Take a moment now and think of a manager you respected. What level of work did you produce for them? And what did they do, and what approach did they take, that led them to be respected by you?  Likely to be on your list is:

• they listened to you and were curious about your views;
• they showed that they believed in you and your future potential;
• and, by doing the above they showed their respect for you.

Don’t work to become a friendly manager – work to become a respected manager.  If you want to develop the right balance in your approach and communication to gain the respect of your team contact us here for expert support.

I know it might seem hard to believe when you think about your most negative employee – but no-one sets out in life to be purposely difficult! People don’t define their life’s mission to be the worst employee ever known and to make themselves and those around them miserable. Somewhere on the way they got lost, took the wrong approach, made the wrong decision and never had the opportunity to learn how to get out the type of situation they now find themselves in.

Yes, if you have a poor performing individual you definitely need to let them know exactly how they are letting themselves and the organisation down in their productivity or attitude. But the approach you take in this is very important and could make all the difference in the outcome you gain. To blame them and leave them with the impression they are useless and beyond hope will only re-affirm they should remain in the negative place that they currently hold. Your role as a manager is to complete the vital task of providing clear and truthful feedback whilst at the same time showing that you believe in them – that you see strengths and value in them, that you see potential.

Below is an old and rare video of Viktor Frankl who wrote the classic book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. As a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, you couldn’t blame Viktor for holding an embittered view of life yet he speaks passionately about the importance of ‘over estimating’ what an individual can achieve.

As Viktor states in the video – by holding a strong belief for an individual you provide them with the opportunity to match it. Even if they only achieve part of the way it can be a huge, and possibly life changing, event for them. Certainly in my experience, once I provided the belief I have been amazed by what some people have gone on to achieve! Therefore, no matter how negative, provocative or difficult your employee may be – believe in them. It is the vital first step for any positive change to occur.

This is possible. OK, I will admit it does not happen in every case! But it is surprising how many times you can have that final meeting with someone and say ‘Regrettably I have no other option left to me other than to dismiss you from this organisation’, hand over the formal letter and for that individual to say ‘Thank you’!

How do you create this end to what could so easily be an acrimonious situation?

1. First thing is to be very genuinely on the side of them being successful in their working life all the way through the process. Note, I do not say successful in the role they currently hold – as they may be in the wrong role – but you do need to hold the bigger picture for them of being successful in their working life. This is the key foundation block – be false on this and the ‘Thank you’ result becomes dubious!
2. Be very specific about what they are doing wrong and equally specific about what you want in its place – it is not sufficient to say ‘don’t’ you must also say ‘do’ – it is crucial to leave absolutely no ambiguity about the changes you are looking for.
3. All the way through the process ask the question ‘Do you agree?’ and if they say ‘No’ listen to their reasons with an open and attentive manner. Asking the question at every opportunity means they will remember having agreed with you and that you were open to hearing them if they did not.
4. At each stage clearly identify the consequences of the changes not being made. An effective phrase to use is ‘I must point out that, as the disciplinary process is in effect, if x does not happen I would be left with no other option but to take this through to the next stage which would be dismissal. But I don’t want that to happen and I don’t think you do either’. If you are sincere in wanting their success (point 1 above) then they will realise that it is not you dismissing them but the process being followed.
5. Be sure to follow-up regularly. If the formal follow-up is 3 months set some monthly milestone targets and on a more informal basis check in to see how they are doing and remind them of the official deadline. I would suggest making this a positive, light touch but it is important that they see you actioning your stated desire for them to improve. However, do not over manage the change for them – be sure to continue to communicate that the necessary improvement remains their responsibility.

Despite your best efforts some individuals still do not change and so effectively chose to be dismissed – strange but true! However, if you follow the steps above you will have significantly increased the chances that they leave thanking you and, hopefully, with some key feedback to apply in their next role!

If you would like to apply the above steps to an individual in your organisation but are finding it difficult to implement we offer 1-2-1 coaching support – contact us here to learn more.

Planning and undertaking a feedback conversation is a big investment of time and effort on your behalf as a manager. Unfortunately, many managers waste all that well meant effort by feeding back on the first issues that come to mind rather than identifying the key underlying issue.

For example, I was in discussion with a participant at a workshop when she said ‘It won’t make any difference what I say as everything I say goes in one ear and then out the other!’

In this case she was preparing a conversation on the wrong issue – the conversation should not be around the quality of this individual’s work but around the fact that ‘everything said appears to go in one ear and straight out the other’. It is not until this KEY issue is resolved that anything else can be successfully tackled.

Stripping away the layers to find the key issue takes thinking about – but it is time well spent! It means that the conversation you undertake will stand a much better chance of creating a significant improvement in an individual’s performance. After all, once an individual learns to truly ‘hear’ what is being said to them then there will be a much greater likelihood of future feedback being acted upon!

The test is always to check ‘If this feedback is acted upon and the identified issue resolved – will they then become an effective employee?’ If the answer is no, it indicates that you need to think again. Finding the key issue can sometimes be harder than it first appears but is always worth the effort.

If you would like some support in thinking your conversation though then please contact us here – we are able to provide you with effective delayering to unearth the key issues!