How to fire someone with compassion and confidence

Firing someone is usually a terrible feeling. It feels terrible even if the person has been warned repeatedly and had every chance to improve. It's someone's livelihood, after all, and it's tough to be the person who takes paying work away from someone.

However, as hard as firing someone is, it's also critically important to your job as a manager. Having the right people on your team makes an enormous difference in how effective you are and how much you achieve. And so holding a high bar and expecting people to meet it, warning them when they're falling short, and taking action when that doesn't change anything are some of your most basic and crucial responsibilities as a manager.

The key to effective, humane firing is to focus on how you treat people during the process. Every situation is different, and no matter what your HR executives or corporate lawyers may tell you, there’s no standard script for letting someone go..

But that doesn’t always help with the nerves when you know you’re about to have a difficult conversation and disrupt someone’s life.

Rehearsing for difficult conversations may be the single best way to prepare for them. It may be useful to role-play with an HR person or someone else who can run through a range of reactions to see how you handle each scenario.

Susy Roberts, executive coach and founder of people development consultancy Hunter Roberts says that preparation is key.

“Ultimately the manager should have all the information about the reasons and be very familiar with it all in advance of the meeting, and there should be no doubt that the correct procedures – both legal and internal - have been followed. Having answers prepared to any questions or potential arguments will help to settle nerves and deal with the fall-out.”

Liz Sebag‑Montefiore from 10eighty human resource consulting has some tips to help you prepare.

• Make sure you have everything you need; documentation for the right individual, script or checklist, tissues (discreetly), water, telephone numbers of appropriate personnel

• Do consider entry and exit

• Do have someone monitor the floor for signs of disruption or upset.

The meeting

“If someone is being fired because they’re under-performing, there should have been multiple prior conversations about it, and written warnings. It shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, but it’s still important for the manager to have all the information in front of them so they can be very clear about reasons and any potential next steps, such as an appeal process,” says Susy.

”If someone is being fired for gross misconduct, they should already be aware that it’s a possibility. But again, communication is key. They may have the right to appeal, so it’s important for the manager to be very clear about the reasons for dismissal and next steps and stick to the facts.”
When the employee arrives at the meeting, deliver the message within the first 30 seconds of sitting down: “We’ve decided to make a change/terminate your position/replace you.”

To drag it out—which many managers do out of discomfort at delivering painful news—invites misunderstanding and awkwardness. The sooner you deliver the basic message and shift the discussion to severance, benefits, and the transition plan, the better.

It’s natural for people being fired to seek more information—to repeatedly ask variants of the question Why? You needn’t offer an elaborate answer; instead, give a simple explanation for the decision—whether it’s due to performance issues, needed cutbacks, or the elimination of roles or functions. If you’ve done a reasonable job of providing feedback, coaching, and context on the dynamics of your workplace before this conversation, the employee already has sufficient information.

And remember…

Surprisingly, within a year’s time most terminated employees end up better off than they were before they were terminated. True, depending on the length of their unemployment and the path they follow, they might have a financial hole to dig out of, but the place they land is a better fit - they are happier.

Remember, if you feel bad about the need to terminate someone, it shows you are human and compassionate. The last thing you want is to become so inured to terminations that they no longer bother you. Of course, they do get easier with experience, but they never get easy.