A tale of hiring, firing, and performance management

Catherine runs a high performance team of 20 engineers within a medium-sized organization. With the company growing revenue just about every year, she has had to hire and train staff quickly and often.

Hiring the best candidate for the job

Catherine was excited about her latest hire. Jeremy had years of experience in the industry, he was amicable, easy to talk to, and passionate about the work the company was doing. Even though Catherine was based on the West Coast, she had 3 other team members located near Jeremy on the East Coast. She wasn’t worried about remote training, because the whole company is remote-first and it’s what she’s used to. Jeremy wasn’t quite the senior they had been looking for, but the team was desperately short-staffed and he checked the necessary boxes. Plus, he had been interviewed by 4 of her employees, in their vetted bias-reducing interview process, and they all agreed he was the best candidate for the job.

Catherine’s only misgivings were:

For one, this guy was older, at least in his sixties. And two, a couple of his more technical roles had lasted less than 12 months. She recognized her own implicit bias, and mentally pushed past the age concern. The average age of the team was early thirties, and the company even younger than that. It will be good for them to embrace an older employee, she thought. Who was she to doubt his ability to adapt and pick up new technologies, when he had passed their interview scenario questions adequately?

An amber flag was raised early on, when the resume review noted his short stints at two previous jobs. Catherine asked him about it in her first interview with him, and Jeremy had adequate responses. In the first scenario, an opportunity had come up to move from the manufacturing side of the industry, to the operations side. That was understandable.

In his most recent job, why had he only been there 8 months? The company needed to downsize, they were met with financial struggles that year. Jeremy had been let go, but it had nothing to do with performance. At least that’s what the company had told him. Okay, that also makes sense. She knew there were a few companies, including the one in question, that had been struggling last year. It all checked out.

Following her HR director’s instructions, Catherine called up Jeremy and offered him the position, stating starting salary, benefits, etc. He was ecstatic, verbally accepting right away. HR went on to send him documents to sign. The turnaround was quite short, with a well-established process for remote hiring. Jeremy’s first day was the following Monday, as soon as they were able to get a laptop and equipment shipped to him. Catherine sent him an onboarding booklet with a summary of different role functions, the customer journey, and summary of the tools he would be expected to learn and use.

Employee onboarding training

Things started out a bit rocky. HR made some mistakes during onboarding, IT hadn’t set up all the right tools for him. Jeremy had a sync with his onboarding buddy, who was on his timezone. They spent the whole hour going over Slack – one of the main communications tools the company used. As the hiring manager, Catherine had a call with him near the end of his first work day, to say hello and reassure him he could reach out for anything. She then asked him to set up a recurring meeting via Outlook and Zoom – to round out training on their communications technology stack. Jeremy was slow to adopt the new technology, but that was kind of what Catherine was expecting. He hadn’t used these tools before. He was older. Catherine knew she, and the team, would have to be patient and help him through this.

Catherine was not expecting…

That people from other teams would get angry at his learning curve. The company’s head of IT called up Catherine one afternoon, spitting. She was upset at how much time Jeremy was wasting with her staff. Catherine knew her direct reports were spending more time than it was expected to get him up to speed too, but this IT complaint seemed unfair. IT had made some mistakes with Jeremy’s set up, they skipped training him on some of the tools they were responsible for.

Catherine made sure the lines of communication were broadened after that. They let her know when there was concern with how much time he was taking. Catherine’s team expected to spend more time with Jeremy for the first 3 months, and then he would take on his own projects, his own customers, and he would be self-sufficient like the rest of them. Each member of the team operated on their own, but also took time out of each month to come together and collaborate. Whether it was helping each other out and ideating solutions asynchronously, or coming together for special training sessions. When one of them succeeded, they all did.

Challenges of a growing team

Despite hiring Jeremy, Catherine’s team was still short-staffed. She was now managing 12 direct reports, 4 more than the company’s recommended maximum. They needed to bring on an additional manager and two more staff to catch up to their workload. This was Catherine’s priority. She had built the material for the new hires, including Jeremy, had 3 high-performing employees who would help get the new starts up to speed, and now needed to make sure she brought in three more staff so she wouldn’t burn out her team.

But 2 months into Jeremy’s probation, Catherine started to worry he wasn’t picking up on things quickly enough. He was working side by side with another employee, on a different team, who was also struggling with performance. The other employee’s manager, Laurence, reached out and asked Catherine for advice. They discussed customer performance with their two employees, and agreed to be more direct with them about expectations.

Laurence and Catherine turned up the heat

In a project team call, with 4 other staff, they asked the engineers on the team what they thought the next steps should be. When the answers weren’t satisfactory, they stepped in to set expectations. There were next steps needed in business development, project management, and customer relationship management. Jeremy and his struggling peer nodded and took on their tasks. Catherine and Laurence both had one-on-one meetings to follow up with their respective employees. They hammered home the expectations and answered questions in a safe, closed-door setting.

Jeremy was worried he had messed up. But Catherine didn’t want him to get caught up in his mistakes, she wanted him to learn from them and move on, be better. She emphasized this and repeated her expectations for him in this role, the accountabilities of the position, and how he should be applying his strengths to project work. “You’re only 2 months in, I don’t expect you to be an expert at any of this yet, but you need to be pro-active. What are you good at now? Focus on that. The rest will come with time and experience in your role over the next couple months, as you ramp up with more customer work.”

This level-setting seemed to resonate with him. Jeremy picked up the pace. He took to the phone more, and worked his strength of communication with a couple of customer contacts. He took notes, and raised concerns, and scheduled meetings. In his third month, Catherine had brought on a new manager. This new manager was a rockstar, came in firing on all cylinders. They had a different style than Catherine, but that’s one of the reasons she liked him so much. The new manager, Aurelio, instantly took an interest in Jeremy’s progression.

Improving performance through diversifying leadership

As Aurelio ramped up and filled the last two open roles, Catherine stepped back from direct management of the engineers. She embraced Aurelio’s opposing experiences and talents he brought to the table. This new manager was different from Catherine, and would make the team that much better. She stepped away from Jeremy’s day-to-day, as she was starting to impede on Aurelio’s progress in his new role, and was able to spend more time coaching her managers.

Aurelio took less than 2 months to get fully up to speed. Around that point, he started raising questions about Jeremy’s performance. Jeremy had now been with the company for 4 months, he was past his probation period. Unfortunately the progress he had made in month three hadn’t stuck. Now, Aurelio and Catherine sat down together to determine what to do next. Aurelio thought he needed to be more hands on with Jeremy, join all the meetings with his customers, and help document the findings. Surely with better coaching he would come around, there was potential.

About a month of that, and it still wasn’t working. What next?

Aurelio was getting frustrated. He was now spending a disproportionate amount of time with Jeremy. While Catherine had more time for her managers and to support the newer staff, the team’s top performers were being left to their own devices. The lack of guidance and leadership was starting to show in little misalignments here and there. Something had to change. What could they do?

“How much time are you spending on Jeremy each week?” Catherine asked Aurelio.

Aurelio was joining all his customer calls, plus preparation before and debriefs after. He also had an hour-long one-on-one with Jeremy each week. He was spending 20% of his time every week working with his poorest performer. Catherine was spending about 10% of her time on the problem. That was too much, they discerned. It was time to talk to HR.

Devising a performance management strategy

HR pushed the leaders to consider their options. “We already considered them,” Catherine frowned. “What he’s shown in his capabilities, there isn’t another role in our team that would work for him. We could maybe make a new junior position for him, but it would be at a reduced salary, and I don’t even have budget for that. We need to improve his competency in his current role, or I don’t see a successful future for him here.” The trio discussed further, but Aurelio and Catherine proved to HR that they had already exhausted the options.

“Well then, I think it’s clear what the next steps have to be.” HR continued, “You need to put him on a performance management plan. He needs to be clear that this is a performance plan. Jeremy needs to own and drive his improvements, and you need to be clear on the expectations.”

“And it’s not “we” who need to improve his competency. That’s on him. You can support him, guide, and coach. But it’s his job to own his career path, not yours.”

– HR

Catherine and Aurelio begrudgingly prepared for this call with Jeremy. They agreed they would revisit their expectations of his role, ask him how he felt he was doing in accomplishing them, and then provide their open and honest feedback. The bottom line was “Your performance isn’t where it needs to be for this role. You’re not meeting expectations that you’re accountable for.”

Jeremy was unhappy to receive this news

As were Aurelio and Catherine to deliver it. “We want you to succeed in this role, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.” Aurelio pressed on. “Now, what do you plan on doing over the next 4 weeks to get on track with expectations of the role?”

Aurelio and Catherine helped Jeremy set goals for the next 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks. Just accomplishing those wouldn’t make him a high performer, but reaching those milestones would ensure he was no longer under-performing. They would mean he was improving, fast enough to meet the role’s expectations and not burden the team further. There would be more work, but it would be a definitive start and one that was good enough for Catherine.

A balance of management

Week 1 of the performance plan came and went, and Jeremy didn’t communicate anything. Aurelio and Catherine called him to a meeting and asked Jeremy to discuss his progress. There was none. This wasn’t a good sign. They reiterated the importance of him hitting these milestones, milestones he himself set and said were reasonable. He apologized and promised he would do better.

Week 2, Jeremy failed again to communicate his progress. Aurelio reached out explicitly listing action items and asked what progress was being made. Jeremy had progressed a couple of the them, but seemed to be dragging his feet.

Week 3 was no kinder to Jeremy, he started yielding results that were unsatisfactory. Now Aurelio and Catherine felt the conclusion was inevitable. They reached back out to HR. Jeremy had one more week on the plan to hit all the milestones he had set over 4 weeks. They would give him that time and continue to provide him with their support, in the hopes he could still succeed. But in the background, the managers worked with HR to prepare for what they would do if Jeremy was not successful.

Friday afternoon came and went

Jeremy had scheduled a presentation to showcase his work over the past month, his progress, and his reasoning for why he was on track for success in his role. It was a disaster. Aurelio felt like all the work in the past 3 months of supporting Jeremy were for naught. He didn’t get it. He wasn’t getting better. At this point they had sunk countless hours for nothing, and were likely to lose a customer because of it.

This had been Catherine’s hire. Catherine’s mistake. She wanted to own the responsibility. But Aurelio also took ownership of the failure. Jeremy was his report, his main focus for the past 2 months, and it hadn’t worked out. That Monday, they finalized the next steps with HR, and the following Tuesday morning the 4 of them, Jeremy, Aurelio, Catherine, and the head of HR all joined a video call.

It was fairly obvious to Jeremy what was going to happen as soon as HR popped up into the video call. “Today will be your last day with the company…” They kept it short, to the point, and thanked Jeremy for his service. HR soon picked up from the managers, to inform him what the next steps would be and what support the company would provide to help him find another opportunity.

Jeremy was quiet and appreciative

He asked Aurelio and Catherine to pass on his sincere thank you to the team. After the call, HR notified IT to disconnect Jeremy from the company’s systems.

Aurelio then called a meeting with his staff, which Catherine joined for support. He let them know the news: today had been Jeremy’s last day. Catherine announced it to the rest of the company shortly after by email.

Catherine and Aurelio were met with much support: ‘thanks for letting us know’, and ‘ya that’s unfortunate, but it makes sense’, and ‘he was struggling’, and so on. It didn’t make the bitterness taste any better, but at least now they could move forward providing much more support to the rest of the team. Jeremy would move on to find a role that suited him much better. And they would all learn from their experience.

Lessons Learned

This is a fictional story, with fake characters and scenarios. But rooted in real life workplace experiences, it’s a story we can learn from as leaders and managers.

Summary of takeaways

• During the hiring process, call references to confirm awkward excuses. While most applicants provide references who will give them a positive review, you might get more insight into awkward questions, such as ‘why did they leave their last job?’ or ‘how do they work with others?’

• If an employee is underperforming, and knows it, they are likely stressed about it. Have compassion for them, like the characters in this story. But also consider that if the role truly isn’t the right fit, you’re doing them a favour in letting them go.

• Frequent and transparent communication between the managers allows effective and efficient collaboration when dealing with a difficult and complex human resources situation. Once an issue is identified, teamwork can help it to be dealt with in a matter of weeks instead of dragging it into months or years.

• Amber flags aren’t always something to sound the alarms at, but should be considered, especially when raised by high performers. In this story, unwanted stress on the IT team was an early warning sign that the employee wasn’t the right fit for the role.

• As a leader, it’s unfair to spend a disproportionately high amount of time on your low performers. It takes away from promoting those who are already excelling and who have great potential to thrive and lift your team or organization to higher levels.
  • If you spend all your time helping your poor performers, it reinforces the notion that those who struggle will gain attention over those who are doing good work and succeeding.