Managing Terminations and Departures
No one should ever be surprised to be fired. The hardest conversation you have with an employee isn’t the one where you let them go, it’s the one right before it.
Suggested Readings
Founders School || Startup CEO || Managing Terminations and Departures || Impact Guide (PDF).
Blumberg, Matt and Hanny Hindi. “Chapter Sixteen: Firing, When It’s Not Working.” Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling up Your Business. Wiley, 2013. 87-98. Print.
Glickman, Jodi and Alicia Bassuk. “When Should You Fire a ‘Good Enough Employee’?” Harvard Business Review, 25 May 2015.
Karen, Dillon. “How Not to Fire Someone.” Harvard Business Review. Video, 1 October 2013.
Groysberg, Boris and Everett Spain. “Making Exit Interviews Count.” Article. Harvard Business Review. April 2016.
“Building the Right Team for Growth” – Scaling Your Company with Scale Venture Partners Rory O’Driscoll and Kate Mitchell.
“Hiring and Management: How Smart Leaders Build Great Teams” Kauffman Founders School eBook.
Kelly, Liz. “4 Things You Should Ask an Employee Who is Leaving.” TheMuse.com. Article.
Questions for You
What is my process for firing an employee? Do I make it clear to them ahead of time that this is where things are headed if improvements aren’t made?
How can I make sure both the employee and I stick to the agreed-upon terms?
What am I trying to learn from my employees during an exit interview? How do the exit interview questions reflect this?
How do I use the information collected from exit interviews? Do I have a process to understand the interview results, track trends or changes over time, and correct problems that surface in the interviews?