Delivering Bad News

You have to be the one who delivers the bad news on the following situation.

“You are a department manager in a mid-sized company that provides technology support services.  You have ten employees who are required to maintain a high level of technical expertise and deliver excellent customer service.  One of your employees, who have been with the company for two years, is performing at a substandard level and you have received numerous complaints from customers and coworkers.  In addition, this employee has displayed confrontational behavior which has created a hostile environment.  You must now meet with this employee and deliver an ultimatum regarding the need for immediate improvement or dismissal.”

I would at first do some homework. I would make sure that I had all the documents regarding the complaints whether it was from customers or co-workers. I would then look at if there is a pattern. I would look at if the employee has always performed this way or was there a point in time when it started to go downhill. I would make sure I had all my details together before I met with the employee.

I would expect the employee to be angry at the information that I am about to give him. He has displayed this before and I would expect him to show that again. I would need to be prepared for that in my approach.

I would call this employee into a private meeting. Talking to someone about a sensitive situation like this in front of other co-workers will never end up in a positive result. I would then ask him how things are going and if there is anything about the job that he would like to discuss with me. There may be some under lying issues that I don’t know about and can help to resolve. I would then be up front and honest with the employee. I don’t believe you get anywhere by beating around the bush or sugar coating things. I would start out by going over what I expect from him as an employee and the standards that he is held up to. I would then let him know that I have gotten several complaints not only from the customers that we service but also from co-workers about his work performance. I would show him the documentation and anything else that I found may support the decline in customer service.

I would expect for him to get angry and my approach to this would be to use S-TLC. The stop, think, listen and communicate approach. Sometimes people just need to get things out and if you just listen to everything they have to say, you tend to learn about what’s going on with that employee. I would hope that my approach to sitting back and listening would able him to get out his words and then I can take that information and help him to be a better employee so that he doesn’t lose his job. I don’t want anyone to lose their job and sometimes there is more going on with the employee that is causing them to perform poorly.

There’s never an easy way to approach a situation where someone could lose their job. I would just try and do the best I have with the information that I have. My ultimate goal is to be able to help the employee resolve this issue and fix it so that they can remain with the company and become a model employee.