When the world is on fire, is it more hostile to keep a problem employee or let them go?
Q: We have a relatively new employee who is supposed to be working from home, but doesn’t appear to do that much working. Their work product wasn’t up to snuff before all this and now that we’re all virtual, it appears to be worse. And coaching doesn’t seem to be working. We get the sense they have one foot out the door. What should we do?
A: Let’s flip the situation for a second. Imagine you were them. That you started a new job which has all the challenges of new people, lingo, environment, expectations and all of it. Then, add the pandemic. You didn’t plan on working from home, so you have no rhythms or systems, maybe not even a desk. You’ve got anxiety around this super-viral invisible thing and how it’ll affect loved ones. And finally, weigh in all the uncertainty, like whether to be worried about your toilet paper supply. Then, ask, what should be done?
It’s not an easy answer, right?
Because we’re human beings. Not some figures on some spreadsheet.
And because work is more than numbers. Yes, work is an economic engine, whereby people get paid this money thing to do certain things, etc. But it’s way more than that.
Work is where we give of ourselves, share ourselves, show ourselves, and become ourselves. Work is how we grow ideas, build things, and create revenues. Each of us contributes our bit and then bit by bit, they join together to become bigger and better. This is how value creation works, by valuing what each of us distinctly bring, our onlyness.
It’s the grocery stocker who organizes everything in the right place, helping us to feed our families. It’s how the journalist writes a story that helps you understand the world. It’s the driver who carefully wipes down and delivers groceries to your mom in another city while you can’t. Or, it’s how you do what you do. Each of us adds value as we participate in this marketplace of value creation.
So the decision of “what to do” has to address what we’re actually talking about: being valued.
You say the person’s work isn’t high quality and isn’t responding to coaching. I’m going to assume the background checks and portfolio suggested they could do the work they were being hired to do. Yet right now, they’re not. The key question is why not.
It takes time to get ramped up, anywhere from 3 months to a year (and that’s without the fog of COVID-anxiety-brain). Yet, far too many people get hired and then expected to start delivering right away. Like, “here’s your desk, aaaand we’re already behind and that’s why we hired you.” But that’s just not enough. Not to the person and not to the company. Instead, the person in the role has to believe in their own value enough to name where they need help, where they are stuck. And the leader needs to make it safe to do so. To say, “Hey, my job is to enable you to add your value here and I’m not done doing that yet.”
And, let me just comment that if you were my boss, during the last six weeks, you probably would have found my work lacking and me not being that great to coach. If you could have taken a peek into week one of me sheltering-in-place, you would have found me mostly huddled under blankets rewatching all 7 seasons of Closer. Week 2, I was mostly surfing the internet for statistics on how I would surely die. Week 3, I managed to wash my hair on a somewhat regular basis. But not much else. And by week 4, I managed to do more than 1 thing a day.
Which is to say, you would have wanted to fire me. The person you’re writing to. And you would have had grounds to, because I wasn’t delivering. I was, at best, dealing. And that was as much as I could do, even though I would have wanted to deliver and over-deliver for you.
The world is an unsettled place right now. No one expected people to be at the top of their game on 9/12/01. This is no different.
So, here’s what I want you to consider: I want you to consider what it means to be on the same team. Solidarity at work matters in normal times. It says, “Hey, we’re in this thing together.” It says we have a responsibility to and for and with one another. It’s not your job to accommodate them or care for them because they’re not an infant or even “family”. You’re adults, parties who come together because of shared goals. It’s the stuff of trust and purpose and safety. (Which is not the same as dependency, lowered standards, or coddling.)
Solidarity is to show up to a commons, what we co-own, we co-create, we co-build.
One of my favorite lines of poetry goes like this:
out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field, I’ll meet you there.
And that’s what I want you to do, invite them to meet you in that field of solidarity.
And solidarity matters deeply right now, in a world of quarantine, because despair comes from that sense that no one cares about what you do. That if the business had to choose between you and just about anything else, you wouldn’t make the cut. But hope comes from solidarity, the knowledge that, together, we’ll work through this, and get through this.
And yet. Business needs to be done. Companies coming out of the pandemic in strong positions will be the companies best set to recover and provide more jobs and opportunities to help the economy regrow faster. Getting us all where we need to be going over time. And that requires having workers do their job — who want to be there, who find ways to perform even when times are hard, that matters. We need that.
And yet and yet. Maybe they are in that state of fright when they can barely function. Maybe they are having personal/family problems that they worry you’ll judge them for. Maybe some mental health issue is being triggered. Maybe it’s just a lot. And maybe they get a mulligan for not being able to work “effectively” and “productively” during a pandemic. And maybe all your other employees feel safer, and they don’t view it as a sign of weakness but as a sign of strength that we leave no person behind. We need that, too.
So. Acting in solidarity means having some frank conversations with the employee. With. Two-way. Real. Maybe what comes from this is to set the person free— with all the generosity in severance, support, gratitude, that the company can muster.
Sometimes people feel trapped by circumstances and don’t want to make the choice themselves — but they later share how leaving a certain place that wasn’t “right” for them helped them become the person they are truly meant to be. To find that place where their value was valued.
All the ways forward will take work on your part. Sorry about that. It’s a Jedi-level skill to lead people, often called “soft” but requires an internal fortitude to manage yourself while you bring out the very best of others.
I want to remind you to show up as yourself — frank about what you see and what the business needs. Where you lay your cards on the table. And enable them to do the same. They are not a charity case, and your job is not to “take care” of them. Your job is to activate the best of people and their ideas, so someone’s value can be best utilized.
What should we do, you asked? Whether it means continuing at your company or not — value them. That’s what we each need right now. To realize we’re not in it all alone.
