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Poor Performance and Termination

	Management/Leadership
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	Termination
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As a manager in a small PA. practice, I have one retirement age, male staff member that continues to turn in a unsatisfactory performance coupled with an apathetic attitude. Supporting documentation spans the tenure of three administrators and the course of thirteen years. Administration refuses to act on the documentation for fear of a age related lawsuit and our business reputation and team morale have suffered considerably. Is there anything that I can do to force administration to stop exempting this employee from following policy and procedure?

This is an annoying and frustrating problem for any manager. Unfortunately, there is probably not an easy solution.

In general, it’s better to focus on objective performance problems rather than an “attitude problem.” That’s because attitude is often subjective, and difficult to nail down. If this employee is impolite to clients or coworkers, or is repeatedly tardy, those are objective, quantifiable incidents. Unfortunately, a manager who repeatedly complains of “Fred’s”  bad attitude may simply be perceived as having a personality conflict with Fred, or an unreasonable dislike for him.

It’s going to be very difficult to address this issue. The administration clearly is willing to accept Fred’s behavior because they fear a potential lawsuit.

One way to convince administration that they should address this issue is to point out that they could potentially be setting themselves up for a lawsuit by another employee, if they don’t.

Suppose Fred is coming to work an hour late every day. If a female coworker suddenly starts to imitate that behavior, the administration has two options. They can ignore the behavior – in that case, every employee is likely to come to work an hour late every day. Or, they can discipline and/or fire the female employee. In that case, they will almost certainly face a suit for discrimination based on gender. (And possibly race, color or nationality as well, if Fred and the female coworker belong to different ethnic groups.) This is true even if it happens some time after Fred retires. The company is setting a dangerous precedent of not firing incompetent employees.

It might also be helpful to point out the negative impact in dollars and cents that Fred is having. (Often, upper management is not as interested in intangibles like “team morale” and business reputation as they are in net profits.) Does Fred’s behavior result in lost revenue, or in the loss of some repeat business? Are his actions so incompetent that they expose the company to a lawsuit from a client? Do other employees quit because of his incompetence, resulting in high turnover and high training costs?

You might also try a little reverse psychology. Propose changing the rule about coming in late. Obviously it’s an irrational rule, since Fred can ignore it with impunity. It’s unfair to everyone else to expect them to show up on time. It’s barely possible that if you do so, the administration will recognize that Fred’s behavior is, in fact, harmful.

You should only proceed if you can successfully convince administration that Fred’s actions are a real problem and they agree to support your solution. Without that support, you may as well resign yourself to waiting until Fred retires.

One of the major problems is that the administration has allowed this behavior to continue for 13 years. It’s going to be very, very difficult at this late date for management to make a case that Fred’s current performance is unacceptable. It is possible to do so, but both the management and administration would need to be in complete agreement.

Essentially, at this point, management would be introducing a “new” standard that all the employees would be expected to follow. (In fact, the “new” standard would be the same standard that all the other employees are already following.) To use our example above, if Fred is coming in an hour late every day, a new standard for being on time would be introduced.  After an initial training period on the new standard, Fred would be subject to the same disciplinary procedures as any other employee who disregarded it. That might include retraining, verbal warnings, written warnings, a suspension and eventual termination.

Again, this tactic will only be effective if the administration decides to support the manager’s decisions, and doesn’t waffle – and it doesn’t sound like they are willing to do so, at this point. Often when employees are singled out for preferential treatment, which is what is happening here, it is because they have a powerful ally at the top.