CNCounty News

Firing my Knee!

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A particularly difficult and sensitive moment occurs in the career of every human resources professional when it becomes necessary to terminate an employee for cause, i.e., to fire them. As a reminder, the HR Doctor is compelled to point out that every manager is really an HR manager.  My colleagues cannot be successful without understanding HR’s basic principles and applying them in all of their dealings with their fellow humans.

However, managers and executives can indeed fail miserably when they suffer sudden brain death in the middle of a tough HR decision and do the wrong thing, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.

Fortunately, the HR Doctor can offer effective treatments to prevent and repair the spreading disease of “Sudden Admin Brain Death.”  The treatment begins by recognizing that all that we should think about in such decision-making is performance and behavior. That bears repeating, “performance and behavior.”  Those two characteristics define the overall principle of being good at HR: that is, the principle of “job-relatedness.” 

Everything we do in making HR decisions, including hiring, deciding on promotions, salary administration, discipline training, investigating alleged wrong-doing, and on and on needs to “orbit” around the bright star called “job-relatedness.”

Job-relatedness leads us back in a direct line to those ideas of performance and behavior. We must make sure that when it comes to any of the decisions we make involving our fellow humans our HR decisions are directly related to the job at hand.  That is, can we explain that the individual’s performance and behavior justified the action we took or are about to take?

You tread on melting ice when you make decisions in HR that are not centered on job-relatedness.  After all, if it ain’t job-related it can easily be argued by some moderately annoying plaintiff’s attorney that their client was fired based on unlawful discrimination, harassment, or some other evil!  Our defense as managers is to show job-relatedness.

In over 40 years of practicing HR, I have been able to make literally scores of thousands of HR decisions. Overwhelmingly, these decisions involved positive outcomes like new hires, promotions or commendation actions.

Seasoned HR professionals, however, also deal with the most difficult elements of employment. That may include firing people who are failing in their duties to perform and behave appropriately.  It may include layoff decisions or even death notifications when an employee tragically dies at work. These are all incredibly difficult.

For me, the most difficult of these have been death notification and decisions about layoffs.  Layoffs are most often framed as the result of economic or technological decisions which lead an organization to reduce the size of its workforce. Because there is “no fault,” hearing the word about losing your job can have an exceptionally serious effect on those involved — and on the person saying those very difficult words.  Those kinds of negative decisions must never be taken lightly. They must be made with the utmost respect and care. Using the word “layoff” must be planned out and generally not to be undertaken alone.

The HR Doctor has used successfully in all these encounters — positive and negative — the psychological concept of “directed imaging.”  In directed imaging you imagine how it would be to hear the words spoken to you, rather than spoken by you. You anticipate the reactions of the person hearing the news and do your best to be in a position to respond to the behaviors your words provoke in the person hearing them.  In effect, you treat the employee as you would want to be treated yourself.

What would it be like for a person to hear that they were being laid off and then to have to go home and explain it to his or her family? What kind of programs or compassionate policies could be implemented now, before the word “layoff” needs to be spoken, thart leave a person’s dignity in place even if their job is being taken away? What can you do to ease the family’s grief if an employee dies at work and it falls to the HR director to join police or others in giving the family that horrendous news?

However, this particular column focuses on a very personal example of termination.  For several years my right knee has failed increasingly when it comes to performing its functions and behaving properly. It has progressively turned a hike into a hobble and a walk into a limp. I’ve spoken to my knee repeatedly, offering coaching and improvement opportunities. I have reminded it of how important it is and how much its success as a joint contributes to my overall success. Sometimes just such a discussion improves things for a while, but in this case the failures of performance and behavior kept recurring.

I sought expert consultation, just as any manager should by consulting with Human Resources.  In this case, I consulted not only with multiple physicians, but most conveniently for me, my doctor daughter Rachel. The advice was generally the same. Namely, if you have tried all reasonable options, short of termination or firing the knee and you are convinced that the situation will only get worse, despite the fact that you have been taking action ever since the first failures appeared, it’s time to do the equivalent of firing your knee — a total knee replacement.

I have often found it interesting (and amusing) that my public administration experience, and HR work in particular, has equipped me to make better personal decisions in virtually every other area of life, including healthcare. Certainly, I would like to think that HR skills helped in finding an incredible spouse, though perhaps much more through luck than deliberate recruiting and interviewing skills. 

I’d like to think that applying coaching, teaching, and training skills as well as role-modeling helped in the development of amazing daughters.  Likewise, I would like to think those years of taking action to protect myself and those I care about financially, in areas including personal security, and medically have been most helpful.  The same has been true about helping people look to the future in bringing about the best outcomes for themselves and the people they care about. Finally, in all these decisions there can never be an understatement of the value of humor and taking a broad strategic perspective about life.

Having done all that, the decision was made. Based on the recommendations and experience of friends, including physician friends, several surgeons were “auditioned” via interviews, background and reference checks, and other “job-related” factors. I finally “employed” the one I felt would most likely handle the “firing” with the best outcome and least risk of poor follow-up.  After careful checking with the real keepers of my medical future — the employees of my health insurance company, I felt greatly relieved to learn that I have been “approved” for surgery. The date has been set for this coming month, and all is ready for the roughly one-hour procedure.

 I am ready to say goodbye to my current right knee and to make friends with the world of titanium. I can only hope that those extremely friendly neighborhood TSA agents at airports will understand and sympathize with me as I set off alarms when I travel. I look forward to the party I plan to have to welcome my new family member!

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