# firing: instead of firing, try moving low performing employees to different teams

if you are a big company and you have a lazy or unproductive employee, what should you do?

my ideal company structure is described at @/ranks. the rules i propose in there already deal with low performance in a natural way by allowing the ranks to go up and down automatically.

but what about a traditional hierarchical company where ranks cannot go down and each person has a manager? the usual process is to put the employee on a performance improvement plan and if that fails, fire them. but is there more that you can do?

note that in this post i will be mostly talking about knowledge workers but similar thoughts apply to others as well.

# the proposal

i'm proposing a new step between the performance improvement plan and the actual firing event. in this new step the low performing person would lose their manager.

the person then no longer belongs to a team and has about 2 months to find a new team. if during that time they can find a new supporting manager who accepts them as a report, they keep their job. and if they still don't have a manager after 2 months, they lose their job.

basically during those 2 months the employee's new job is to find a way to make themselves useful to the company. this should be enough time to decompress from the previous assignment, refresh old skills, and interview at new teams or for new roles.

# the reason

a lot of times the employee is a low performer due to the environment they are in.

• maybe the employee's current tasks are too simple or too complex for them.
• maybe the team has too many meetings, or too little process. without agile sprints the employee doesn't know what to do on it own.
• maybe their manager micromanages them, doesn't challenge them enough, or simply the relationship with the manager is bad.
• maybe a specific coworker is giving them too much stress.
• maybe sitting next to the busiest or noisiest door is giving them too much stress.
• maybe they had trouble in their personal life, and just had a rough year.

these are often completely unconscious and the employee doesn't realize the underlying source of stress. in a big company different teams often have different culture. it is possible the employee would thrive in a different team. and onboarding an active employee often needs significantly less time investment than a completely new hire. the employee might bring useful institutional knowledge with them as well. so this is very useful for the new team.

# seeking teams

large companies usually have an internal job board. that's where the employees can find new transfer opportunities. the person seeking a new team could find new teams there. or if the employee is famous enough, they could just broadcast a "hey, anyone want to hire me?" message and rely on good luck.

if a team is hiring a new member, they usually only see a resume and whatever impressions the interviewers had from the person. that's all the information they have. that's what they need to make the hiring decision on. however with this process, teams can try out the new person even for a week. they can give them assignments, the person can participate in meetings, etc.

maybe you, as the manager, see in the person's file that they had low performance in their previous two teams. maybe the person just couldn't get excited about working neither on ads nor policy compliance systems. but maybe the person could really thrive in your low-level infrastructure team. you are not sure though. this person in limbo could become a part of your team temporarily. there's no legal shenanigans to worry about because the employee is still legally employed. your confidence whether the person is a good fit or not should significantly increase after the trial period.

why should the company not give their employees the opportunity to thrive? why do companies throw away completely good candidates after they matched them to the wrong team?

# reality

i haven't seen such a process implemented anywhere. big companies are simply insensible. they usually reduce everything to money. a person not assigned to a task is bleeding money for them and that must be eliminated. this would be a long term investment and wall street cannot allow that.

it is very important for a company to avoid falling into this sort of thinking. but that's a thought for some other day.

published on 2023-02-25

to the frontpage