About two years ago, we worked with an owner who wanted to fire a difficult employee, but felt that he couldn’t. The employee was the only person in his company who knew how to perform some key parts of the production process.
The business owner said he felt like a hostage, even as this important employee continued to act out and disrupt the workplace. The situation came to a head when the employee cursed at the employer and told him off in front of other employees. The employer had to take action.
Obviously, buiness owners cannot let an employee be publicly disrespectful. That undermines the owner’s ability to manage, and will almost certainly lead to further incidents of bad behavior.
While our example is particularly dramatic, this situation happens more often than you think. We have worked with several employers who have hesitated to discipline or terminate employees who had a valuable skill set they feared losing. And our advice when employers find themselves with a disrespectful or disruptive employee is always the same: Act on the behavior regardless of the employee’s value.
If this means termination — so be it. The route may not be easy, but everyone is replaceable.
To lessen the pain, below are six tips that may help.
Use short-term coverage tactics. What have you done when the problem employee is on vacation or out sick? Use those same tactics to cover for your employee once he or she is gone. This may not be a long-term solution, but it will buy you some time.
Throw resources at the problem. Can you or someone in your organization figure out how to do the job? Mastering the task may initially take twice as…