Losing the Job

For a manager, firing an employee is never an easy task. It is an emotionally draining activity. In India losing a job has emotional connotations far beyond the financial implications. Losing a job could be a result of broad layoffs, a result of poor performance or a result of career stagnation. The last one is the toughest for a person to handle.

One could lose a job as a result of the entire group getting retrenched. This is witnessed during the economic downturn when the company takes such actions to keep its financial scorecard healthy. In such a case the employee becomes a victim for no fault of his. He could draw solace from the fact that he is not alone. When the job market improves he is sure to find another job.

One could lose a job as a result of bad performance. In this case the employee is not caught unawares. Typically an organization as part of the performance appraisal system would have given the feedback of poor performance to the employee. Most often the managers are reluctant to let go the lowest performer unless that employee exhibits serious attitude issues that could impact the team. While this may seem humane, in reality the manager’s inaction negatively affects the employee. Being at the bottom of the organization the employee’s compensation is affected year on year. Letting him go may benefit him. He may be able to find a better paying job where his skills are more valuable than in the current organization. But before letting him go, the employee should be given feedback for improvement. Good organizations does this well. They also put the employee through “Performance Improvement Program” to give him a choice to improve. Despite all these actions if the employee’s performance does not improve, the organization may have to let go the person. The employee is mentally prepared as he has been given due feedback and an opportunity to improve.

The third case when one could lose the job is when the person adds less value to the organization compared to his experience. He may not be a poor performer. Typically this case occurs at senior levels. The person through his past experience and accomplishments would have grown to be a middle level manager. In this process he may have gone away from being “hands-on” employee. If this person does not have the right leadership skill to grow further, he gets stuck at the middle level managerial position. Over time the junior employees develop skills and are better in their accomplishment s than this person. Neither growing as a leader nor being as technical/handson as the juniors this person gets stuck. The risk of losing the job for this person is low if he is part of a big organization. However for smaller organization he becomes an overhead. Sooner than later this person comes into the radar screen of the management. His tenure in the organization depends on the results of the organization and the relationship this person has with the management. If the management is fair, then it would help find a suitable role for him in other organization that values his skill. If it cannot find such a role then it would give sufficient time and even a voluntary retirement package for the person to find a job elsewhere. However at such high experience level without good leadership skills it will be difficult to find a suitable job elsewhere.

To keep the job, one has to constantly improve their performance at work and develop the leadership skills.

Happy Reading,
Ram