What To Do When You've Got the Wrong People?

Due to labour shortage, most companies are like beggars when it comes to hiring people. Because there is so much work to do, and because you have a limited budget, you are quite happy to take anyone who is willing to work with you. The hope is that let’s just go ahead and get him on the team, and we’ll teach him on the job.

However, having the wrong person in that role can be far more expensive!

You may not even realise he is a misfit, because your employee will always have a ready excuse for why he has failed to deliver as promised. He will blame the limited budget or the competition, but when you finally do figure out that he is the wrong person for the job, you are reluctant to fire him, because terminating someone is very hard to do.

No one likes unpleasantness and therefore you try to put it off. You hope that with training and guidance he will improve, but when this doesn’t happen, you are in a quandary. Your first response is to try to push him into an alternative role – one which is more suited for him.

Because you don’t have the courage to fire him, sometimes you create a role in the company for him , but this ends up becoming a drain on your limited resources. It can be heart-breaking to let someone go, but you don’t have the luxury of trying to fit square pegs in round holes.

When An Incompetent Employee Must Be Let Go

Sometimes it’s kinder to fire him – not just for the company, but for him as well. After all, if you are not happy with him, imagine how miserable he must be, knowing that he is unable to deliver.

Checking and counter-checking his work ends up draining your time and energy – and you really don’t have the luxury of being able to supervise him and correct his errors. Rather than reducing your work-load, he increases your burden. Because you cannot trust that he will do his job efficiently, you need to micro-manage him, and this drags down your personal productivity.

The longer you allow the problem to fester, the worse it becomes. Sometimes you so need to be ruthless, and this is part of the job description of being a boss

In Conclusion
It’s cheaper and easier, in the long run, to let wrong people go. You may worry that firing him will hurt the morale of the rest of the team, but most people are happy to see an under-performer leave, as no one likes working with incompetent people. You don’t need to be cruel about this, and if they can see that you have done your best to help him find another job, they will be quite willing to accept your decision. In fact, some of them may say that this is something you should have done much earlier!

Learn to hire slowly – hiring the wrong person can prove to be an expensive mistake!