I hope this finds you very well and enjoying your summer.
As solopreneurs, we don’t often have the experience of hiring employees; more often subcontractors. However, there is an important lesson below should you ever decide to go down that path.
Enjoy the below video! You may recognize someone in it.
CLICK HERE: REASON 29: VIDEO
Excerpted and adapted from “Seventy Reasons Not to be an Entrepreneur (and why I wouldn’t do anything else)” Copyright 2013 by Michael A. Babiarz, all rights reserved.
Reason Number 29: Hiring is a &**& and firing is a bigger *(**. Hiring is not a fun process. For the small businessman, if the size of the company mandates employees, it is a process that will need to be repeated, time and time again. Your employees will quit. When they quit, replacing them means going through the painful hiring process all over again. But what if an employee needs to be let go?
You hired an employee, and she turns out to be a dud. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to train her to do a good job. You have given her lots of opportunities to improve her skills, but sadly, you are realizing that you made a mistake in hiring her in the first place.
You hired an employee, and he is a behavioral nightmare. He engages in one of the following activities (check as many as apply): [ ] he steals from you; [ ] he is disrespectful and insubordinate towards you; [ ] he appears to have an alcohol or substance abuse problem; [ ] he is aggressive and violent; [ ] he is plain lazy.
You hired an employee, anticipating that increasing revenues will allow your business to support the employee as well as you. You find that revenues have flattened out or decreased, and the employee is now making more money than you are. You have to lay off your employee.
Firing, laying off, or otherwise terminating an employee is a very unpleasant task. Letting a guy go because you can’t afford to keep him not only will disappoint him, but can be humiliating for you. After all, this is not a Fortune 500 company. Admitting that you can’t pay an employee can be construed as admitting your failure. Further, the behavioral nightmare can be a hazardous firing for many reasons. He could take a swing at you. If he has an alcohol or substance problem, you have to check carefully with national and local laws to be sure that the firing is permissible and handled properly. No matter what the reason, he may feel that the firing was unjustified, and may decide to file suit against you for wrongful termination, even if you are in a state that is governed by the “employment at will” doctrine. Finally, the employee that is a dud, whether male or female, may burst into tears when you fire him or her.
Other than firing someone for stealing from you or punching you out, in many cases the person who does the firing (that’s you) will wind up feeling worse about that interaction than the one who was fired (your ex-employee). For even the toughest, thick skinned business person, a firing is an emotional deal.
Was hiring that employee a difficult, distracting and draining experience? Wait until you have to terminate one!