6 Steps To Fire Someone At Your Moving Company
- Document the reasons you’re firing them in their employment file – You never know which employee will turn around and sue you for wrongful termination. Before you fire someone, make sure that you have good documentation in their employee file showing the reason you are firing them. Don’t skip this step, you’ll be sorry if one day someone unfairly files a lawsuit against you.
- Prepare yourself for the conversation – Before you have the conversation with the employee to terminate their employment, make sure you prep yourself first. You always want to go into the conversation knowing what you’re going to say and also what you’re not going to say, this way you can get right to the point.
- Keep it brief – There is no need for a long drawn-out conversation. You don’t want to get into finger pointing and blaming and bringing up all of the things that they did wrong. Keep it short and sweet.
- Allow them to resign – If someone is just not a good fit and they didn’t do anything to hurt you or your company (like stealing), then give them the opportunity to resign. This will not only allow them to keep their dignity but also help them to find another job.
- Tell them what the next steps are – After you give them the news that they are being let go, tell them what the next steps are. Things like when they should leave, when they will receive their last paycheck etc.
- Meet with the remaining staff – When you fire someone, usually the rest of the company will be on eggshells. They may be wondering “Am I next?”. You want to make sure you address this with your remaining staff and let them know what they can expect moving forward.
I’m not encouraging you to go out and start firing people. But I know that when you finally let someone go who is not a good fit or is hurting your company, it’s a huge relief. Treat the person with respect and handle the situation with class, but do what’s best for you and your company.
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Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]
Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. If you’ve ever had to fire somebody in your company, you know it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s not a fun thing to do. But if you have to fire someone who’s a longtime employee, who’s been with you for a while, it’s even more challenging. I’ve had to fire family members, and best friends, and people that have been with me for years, and it just… Sometimes they’re not on the same path with you and sometimes your company’s growing and going to a certain level and they’re no longer a good fit in that position or maybe they had something change in their life and all of a sudden, they’re just not the same person that they once were. And they’re not delivering the value that you need from them in your company. Maybe they’re being disruptive with your other staff and causing problems. There’s a lot of reason why you might need to let somebody go. And I could tell you, it’s not an easy thing to do, but if it’s time, then you need to do it.
I wanna give you some steps to go through here that if you need to fire a longtime employee for whatever reason, that you have some steps to follow to go through. And you need to remember one thing, they’re not gonna be happy about it, but at the same time, they could actually be relieved. You never know. They might not wanna be working for you anymore either, they just don’t wanna let you down. You might not wanna fire them and they might not wanna quit on you. So you really don’t know, but you have to go into it expecting that they’re not gonna be happy about it. And you have to do it with respect. Unless they stole money from you, unless they purposely screwed you over, you need to go into it with respect. You need to honor the situation and know that they’re gonna get upset in that meeting. They may say some things to you to try to trigger you and set you off and you need to remain calm and cool and just handle the situation. So I’m gonna give you some steps here to follow.
First thing you need to do before you bring ’em in, before you have the meeting, as you’re starting to think that, “It’s time for me to let this person go,” document the reasons for their employment file. I don’t care who it is, I don’t care if it’s family, I don’t care if it’s your best friend, I don’t care if it’s somebody’s who’s been with you for a long time, you need to have a good documentation, if this turns into a lawsuit. A lot of times when someone’s close to you, a lot of times when someone’s been with you for a while they may get bitter over you firing them and turn around and file a lawsuit. You wanna make sure that your ducks are in a row, that you have all your paperwork lined up, that you have good reasons for firing them. In certain states, you wanna make sure you know the laws in your states when it comes to firing. You wanna make sure that you have everything you need in the file to show, if for some reason you do end up in court, you have reasons that you fired them. This is for you before you even have a meeting with them to let them know that you’re letting them go.
Second thing, prepare yourself for the conversation. This isn’t something that you just wanna wing, this isn’t something that you just wanna get in there and wing it with them. You wanna know what you’re gonna say and you also would wanna know what you’re not gonna say. It’s very easy to get caught up in a conversation when they start asking why, “Tell me what I did wrong, tell me what I could have done better.” You need to prepare yourself, you need to go into it with your mind made up. If you wanna have a conversation with someone about their performance, that’s a different issue. You have a conversation with them about their performance, but if you know that it’s time for them to go, you need to go into it with your mind made up and prepare yourself for that. You’re gonna wanna keep it brief. You don’t wanna get into this whole this long thing, you wanna tell ’em the reason that you’re letting them go, that you’ve made up your mind and that’s it. You don’t wanna get into what they could have done wrong, you don’t wanna start blaming them for stuff, you don’t wanna start bringing up specific issues, you wanna keep it brief. They’re gonna wanna know why, they’re gonna wanna drill you for information, there’s no benefit in that. There’s no benefit in dragging out the conversation like that. Make it brief, move on, be respectful, allow them to resign.
If there’s somebody that’s been with you a while and they’ve… You just are going in separate directions and they’re no longer needed for your company, and again, they didn’t steal from you, they didn’t do something to hurt you, give them the opportunity and allow them to resign, instead of being fired. This is gonna help them find another job, it’s gonna help them be able to tell their next employer that they left instead of that they were fired. And it helps them keep some dignity and not feel like, “I got fired.” So give ’em that opportunity. Always tell ’em what the next steps are. You wanna make it brief, you wanna go in there with precision. Do what you need to do and move on. It’s not easy. So you wanna make sure you tell ’em what the next steps are. “We’re gonna mail your paycheck to your house, I’m gonna need you to go get your belongings right now and leave for the day,” or “So-and-so is gonna escort you out.”
Whatever the case may be, you need to be specific about what the next steps are. If they’re certain… If you wanna help them file unemployment, give ’em all the paperwork and say, “Here, go ahead and file unemployment.” Give them next steps. If you have a severance package for them let them know what it’s gonna be. Any paperwork you need them to sign, get it all done right then and there. Let ’em know what the next steps are and once they leave there’s gonna shock within your company. If this is a long time employee, somebody that’s been there for a while, all the rest of your staff looks at them as part of the main infrastructure of the company, as the main figure of the company. You wanna meet with the remaining staff right away. And you don’t necessarily need to give everybody an explanation. You wanna give a short, brief explanation, so and so is no longer with us, I had to let him or her go today, but I just wanna let everybody else know, you’re doing a great job or whatever the case may be you might have to fire more than one person in one day, you might have to fire a group of people.
You wanna make sure that everybody else there feels comfortable because when people get fired, everybody in the company is on eggshells. Everybody’s wondering, “Am I next? Am I next? What’s going on? What’s going on? What happened?” You wanna address it right away. Don’t fire somebody and just go right back about your business and act like nothing happened. Have a meeting with your staff, let them know what happen, you could be vague in what the cause was, say something along lines of, “He or she was just no longer a good fit for the company, we parted ways, and I want everybody to know, it’s business as usual, if you have any questions, come and see me and I’ll address them with you personally.” That’s it. Real short, real sweet, and you move on. And what I’ve found is that you feel a lot better after you do this. Anytime that I had someone that I knew I needed to let go and I procrastinated a little bit because it was hard and I kind of avoided it a little bit, once it was done and it was over it felt great, it was off your chest, you could move forward.
It really holds you down when it’s every single day and you’re like, “I need to let that person go, how do I do it, how do I deal with it?” Listen, I know it’s tough, I know it’s hard, I’m not encouraging you to just start firing people, but sometimes someone’s not the right fit for your company. It’s not a bad thing. If you have vision for where your company needs to go, if you have a vision for the people that you need, and you have certain job descriptions that you need people to facilitate and they’re not doing their job, you need to let ’em go. People are either hurting you or they’re helping you. It’s very rare that somebody’s like right in the middle. And if they’re right in the middle, chances are they’re sliding to the side of hurting you. If they’re no longer helping you progress to where you want your company to go and doing your job and you feel like it’s time, you need to do it. Follow these steps, I know it’s hard, but you’ll get over it, they’ll get over it, they’ll be better off, they’ll find another job, they’ll be fine. It’s not the end of the world.
If you have any questions, as always, leave ’em in the comments down below, I’ll be more than happy to answer ’em for you. Until I see you next week, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see ya later.