To be honest, it's probably best to just wait it out a few months.
One poor-performing employee isn't worth the risk of destroying the morale and trust of all the others.
One poor-performing employee isn't worth the risk of destroying the morale and trust of all the others.
Management being capricious is basically "news at 11", but management being perceived as hesitant/incompetent can be MUCH worse EVEN from the PoV of an employee (=> because that indicates the company has no future)!
Making the change now:
- won't save the situation
- it might, as others have mention actually undermine any trust the rest of the team has left
- invite legal action on the part of the dismissed employee.
All that aside, giving the rogue employee the benefit of the doubt, it feels like it might be health / mental health related issue. Random time off being the tell.
Sucks for the team. But dismissing someone who needs help is a tough call.
I’d consider firing immediately and granting their vesting as if they stayed through the month as part of the termination package.
There's no perfect solution to this problem.
10 employees doing the work and wondering "why is this guy getting paid the same as me?" hurts the company too.
Every action has downsides. Every day they're still there demotivates others, possibly making them look for "better" jobs, since clearly their own can be done by a slacker.
But every firing, even of someone clearly underperforming, will cause a bit of fear in even the best performer.
Agree that slackers ruin morale though. Currently going through this at my place. It’s especially difficult when merely being on the same team as slackers makes the external opinion of everyone on that team horrible. Some might know the better members but on average the reputation can be stained.
I'll go with your opinion being that it may be the best solution, but perfect it is not.
The mere fact that I don't even think it's the best solution means that there may very well be employees here who also don't, which means it's not perfect.
There will be employees who will hear "this fired person's stock was taken out of your end of year bonus". Because it kinda was. Especially at a small company where one employee-month plus their stock can be a significant portion of company yearly profits.
Doing it when the vestment date comes up just reeks of shortsightedness to the point of vindictiveness. Immaturity.
If it’s like the person quit but kept coming to work for the last month before vestment then talk to them and maybe offer to buy them out if they’ve got no good explanations.
Agreed. We don't have all the facts but management is not without blame.
> Doing it when the vestment date comes up just reeks of shortsightedness to the point of vindictiveness. Immaturity.
I've made my point repeatedly that the gains from paying it out are also shortsigted and may not be worth it, so no need to repeat.
Compensating people who don't deserve it pisses people off. Maybe those people are immature, but they do include your best performers too.
Like I said, no perfect solution. Management (arguably) caused the situation, and there's no perfect fix.
not really? if he is unjustly compensated more than he is worth it's kind of funny, but unless you're a child you shouldn't really care about it. this is way different than if you were compensated less than what you are worth.
As I pointed out in another comment that you replied to (though I'm not sure you read it properly, since I've already made this point and did not seem to incorporate it into your reply), while comp is not a zero sum game, it also isn't entirely not a zero sum game.