Get Past Your Fear of Firing

For the July issue, our managing editor interviewed Ben Lerer, co-founder of Thrillist. During the interview, Ben said something I’ve heard countless times from other business owners, including myself: “For a long time we were beholden to the employees...we were scared to let anybody go.”

After running my business for a couple of years, I wised up and adopted the following philosophy: “Hire slow, fire quick.” Recently, CNN’s money.com put out a list of business-killing traps and naïve hiring and fear of firing rank among them. According to the site, a good test of determining if you have a fear of firing is to ask yourself: Would you be relieved if anyone on your team quit tomorrow? If the answer is yes, you've got a problem.

Comments

[Hunt Marckwald]

Nice article. Were I working for you, this blog would make me quit on the spot. Whatever happened to loyalty, training and support?

[Rob Levin]

Have you ever been a business owner? Business owners will take a bullet for an employee that is a great performer. That said, business owners are often slow to fire poor performers (much slower than larger companies) which puts the company as well as all of the other employees at risk.

So the good performers never have to worry... well they have to worry only if the owner does not fire poor employees in a timely fashion. If the poor performers quit, so be it.

[howie]

I heard someone say recently that the right time to fire someone is as soon as you start saying to yourself "I really should fire that person." But I always do have a fear of firing someone and it usually takes me 6 months after I have that thought to actually do it.

[Matthew Weiss, President of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, New York Chapter]

One of the biggest mistakes I made was not terminating an employee sooner. I allowed him to linger around almost a year before I finally took action.

The final straw was when he failed to show up for work on Yom Kippur. I would never interfere with someone's religious observances but this particular employee was obviously dogging it. You see he was Irish.

[Larry Zogby]

People fire themselves. It is an essential muscle that every HR Manager, Business owner, Ceo, etc. has to develop. Fire quickly.
We are in positions to protect other employees, customers & culture.
The biggest mistake is not to deal with the conflict at hand.
"It is not personal just business"!