Turnover is hard – and expensive. While it seems easy to fire an employee, it isn’t always the best move. However, there are times when there is no room for improvement because performance or behavior is poor, therefore replacing an employee is the optimal way to mitigate risk.
We recognize that there will come a time when you have to exit team members from your organization, or pass them over for promotions, raises, and other rewards. So, when we designed the Truvelop app, we considered how it could serve as a HR performance management tool to store all comments, documents, and plans regarding individual team members.
Every data point and comment captured within Truvelop including KPI’s, summary comments, and attachments should be treated as legal documents that are in line with principles of fairness and equality as well as current employment laws.
Determining whether or not an employee is capable of improvement or if there is opportunity for the employee to perform better in a different role are important steps to take prior to making the decision to ultimately terminate.
Regularly scheduled evaluation will help you memorialize what your team member is doing well and not doing so well. Comments will help you document the team member behaviors and actions that resulted in their score, which is great to reference at a later date. The more evidence you provide for a score, the more accurate and objective it is going to be.
With Truvelop, you can also Evaluate or Spark based on an incident. If you see a team member doing something dangerous, exceptionally wrong, or blatantly inappropriate, note it immediately and schedule time to meet with the employee to discuss it.
Often underperforming employees aren’t aware that their performance, attitude or behavior is standing in the way of them being successful. It is the manager’s responsibility to help team members be successful, removing obstacles, motivating, educating, and inspiring team members and teams. It is important to clearly communicate with employees what is expected from them and what improvements need to be made—and by when.
Failing – or Replacement Players – pose a real risk to your team and organization. Failure to appropriately address issues associated with Replacement Players can foster resentment, mixed messages and lack of accountability throughout your scope of influence and the entire organization.
Despite a detailed performance improvement plan, and consistent, frequent communication, an employee’s attitude or performance issues may be so high that regardless of the team members potential, he or she must be removed from the organization.
Here are a few steps we recommend when determining if it’s time to terminate and replace an employee:
- Contact your supervisor and HR Department. Consult them on your organization’s specific steps to move someone out of your organization.
- Review previous Truvelop scores and history, employee assessments or reviews.
- Review results of PIPs
- Ensure you have all documentation where you have discussed and documented performance or attitude issues and discussed these issues with the team member. If you have been using Truvelop, that will all be present in the team members’ Summary history.
- In conjunction with senior leadership and/or the human resources department, assess and understand the risks associated with terminating this team member.
After you have terminated an employee, take the time to evaluate your current roster of team members, reviewing their scores, comments, PIPs and opportunity for growth or improvement. Determine if you have existing employees who can move into new roles before making a decision for how to replace the terminated employee. Truvelop can provide you a comprehensive snapshot of your team and the capabilities and gaps that exist which can inform your hiring strategy.
Detailed documentation and frequent evaluations are critical to supporting a manager’s decisions for hiring, firing and replacing employees. Contact us today to learn more or click here to schedule a demo to find out how your business can benefit from our industry-leading, modern approach to performance management and development.
