Handling the Tough Job of Firing Someone in the Data Processing Department

Most employees, who are fired, expect it. Moreover, most of them admit to themselves that they deserved it.

Having mediocre, nonproductive employees in a department adversely affects everyone. The mediocre employee who keeps the job never advances; good workers become discouraged and look for employment elsewhere; those who stay under these conditions often feel a kinship with the mediocre employee, which means you eventually end up with an entire department of such people.

If the employee who is to be fired reports directly to you, then it's up to you to do the distasteful task yourself. Once you have made up your mind to terminate the employee, do it. Do your best to minimize embarrassment. Be prepared with the payroll check to date plus severance pay and information about details of health plans and insurance. Under no conditions should you lie to the employee.



One word of caution: if you are considering firing someone, make sure it's for cause, and not based on personal considerations that might kick back on you later in the form of a lawsuit. Document every employee's performance on the job, so that when it comes time to break the bad news, you have the ammunition to back it up.

Leverage your career by learning how to hire smart.

Once You Have Made the Choice

Prejudices are distasteful in every walk of life. They certainly have no place in the hiring process.

Don't waste time bringing the person you have chosen into the company. I've seen it happen countless times: you make your choice, but establish a starting time too far into the future. During that time, a better job is offered the candidate, and you end up being rejected.

And plan for your new employee's first days on the job. It's demoralizing to a new person to hang around doing little because no one has taken the time and interest to prepare. Have projects that the new employee can get into almost immediately.

Do You Really Need a New Employee?

Under staffing or over staffing a department can have serious budget and productivity consequences. Avoid both by carefully examining the needs of the DP department you now head. A good sign that you're overstaffed is that no one ever works overtime. It's cheaper to pay for occasional overtime than to carry excess help on a permanent basis.

• If someone leaves your department, distribute the work that person had done among other staff members. It's interesting how often the departed employee's work can be handled by others, negating the need to hire a replacement.
  
  
• Many highly skilled and experienced data processors are now available through temporary services. Avoid permanent overstaffing by bringing in these specialists during peak workloads. Not only will it save you money, but you might find it contributing substantially to your department's efficiency.
  
  
• Promote from within whenever possible. It's good for morale. Also, it means you are dealing with known entities. There is no need to check references again on someone who has been working for you for a while and doing a good job.
  

No matter what level of management you reach, you are going to be faced with the difficult task of hiring people to work for you. You might have an excellent personnel department to fall back on, but you will still be the one charged with making the final decision. Recalling one of my studies mentioned earlier, entry-level data processors were hired 68 percent of the time by DP management, while Personnel was involved only 14 percent. When it came to hiring experienced data processors, DP's direct involvement rose to 74 percent, while Personnel did the direct hiring 12 percent of the time. What that means to you, the data processing manager, is that along with all the computer knowledge you have had to amass up to this point, you are now called upon to become a hiring expert, which leads to the first rule of good management: you are only as good as the people you hire.

The term "leveraging" is popular these days as companies perform "leveraged buyouts" of other firms. For you, a data processing manager, the people working for you can and should be used to leverage your continued reach for success. Your reputation rests upon their performance, and by carefully developing and nurturing a top-notch DP department, your star rises a lot faster. There is, of course, a downside: hire the wrong people and your star will fade in direct proportion to their failure to produce for you.