Cutting Your Losses on New Hires

[1990C4S]

I like to think I'm a pretty fair employer. I hire people who might need a bit of training, but want to work a better life.

I have a person now, six months in, and I'm ready to throw in the towel, which I have never done before. I always find a way to bring 'slow learners' along and make them useful in one way or another.

My co-workers that I trust are in the 'cut him loose' camp. My counter-argument is that they are all 'A+' performers, when we do big projects, we need C's and D's that can work nightshift, do the crap jobs, and support he productive people.

I am really on the fence with this guy. He is from 'another country', slow to learn anything and books his hours to the minute, if he comes in at 8:06 AM, he leaves at 4:06 PM, never a minute extra.

He also answers any question with what he thinks I want to hear, or what he thinks I might be asking, he does not seem to listen to the actual question. Here's an example, 'Have you done the training?', he says 'Yes', I say 'Send me the certificate', he says 'I don't have it, I'm not done the training'. So he started the training, but told me he was done. English is his second language, but this is not a language issue, this is a brain issue.

He also to another online course that requires 90% to pass, it's supposed to be a week. He studied for a wee (maybe a but more) got 80%, and told me he failed because his internet service was too slow. But when I told him to retake the course, he said he needed another week to prepare.

I feel bad for the guy, he moved here from far away, he has a wife and kid, but I'm not sure I can deal with him any longer. He gives me a headache, and he's an anchor on my office productivity, I'm struggling to find work for him now.

[GH85Carrera]

Where I worked for 26 years, we had a two week probationary period for all new employees. One was a heavy smoker, so always outside on "smoke break" and not working. He only made it through the first week. Another guy was a "worm dirt" sucker. Always had a mouthful of that nasty stuff, and had a spit cup. It stunk up any darkroom he was using and every other employee complained, so he made it 4 days, but we paid him for the full week.

I was the "production manager" but my own job kept me way too busy to manage the individual employees. We hired a sub manager to deal the employees. After 6 months one of our best and most productive employees told the owner, either that guy goes, or I will kick his ass, or I go. The boss told me to fire him. Any boss that has had to fire someone knows how hard it is. He went right to the owner and declared "you can't fire me!" and the owner said the hell we can't. You have 5 minutes to gather any personal items, and we will escort you to the door. If you resist we will call the cops to arrest you for trespass, and never darken our door again.

We had many great employees there for 15 year or more.

[zakthor]

Theres a hungry kid somewhere that would kill for the job and enjoy such an empathetic boss.

[911 Rod]

You can't save them all.

[red 928]

You are not happy with this guy's performance,
and so far he's on his best behavior.
He does the bare minimum to get by and
it'll only go south from here.

You already know the answer and are
just looking for confirmation.
Done.

[Seahawk]

I would outline exactly what he is going to do to keep his job and communicate that directly to him: Use your post as a starting point since it was on point.

Time stamp it, track the actions he is to accomplish and only focus on his job performance, nothing else, not even his family situation...this is a HE problem, not a you problem.

Also, provide a deadline for compliance with your demands.

At a certain juncture, demand, don't ask...and make sure he is aware of the screen door on the way out.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by zakthor

Theres a hungry kid somewhere that would kill for the job and enjoy such an empathetic boss.

Not in the field we work in, job postings typically get zero replies. It's crap automotive shut-down work. Everyone wants to work for Google or Facebook...no one wants to program an assembly line.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I would outline exactly what he is going to do to keep his job and communicate that directly to him: Use your post as a starting point since it was on point.

Time stamp it, track the actions he is to accomplish and only focus on his job performance, nothing else, not even his family situation...this is a HE problem, not a you problem.

Also, provide a deadline for compliance with your demands.

At a certain juncture, demand, don't ask...and make sure he is aware of the screen door on the way out.

I did that last Friday, in great detail, then an email to confirm what we discussed. This week he will get put on probation, then reassessed in two weeks.

The skids are greased.

[matthewb0051]

I had a subordinate back in 2007 that the bosses promoted to a coveted prosecutor position. I literally had to prop this woman up the entire time she worked for me. Prosecutors typically are very Type A aggressive people. Not this one, no backbone, no confidence, marginal competence.

FF to this past year. She had saved an email from one of her bosses after working for me, the email was over 10 years old. She then forwarded it to those that cared and painted that boss in a very unfavorable light re: criminal defendants and Congress. Ultimately got the guy removed from his new position. The irony is that she was no longer in the Army but still had it in for a dude in the Army. (I am woman hear me roar)

Stand your ground and document everything, and I do mean everything. That saved my bacon on another instance when my senior paralegal tried to appeal his annual evaluation. I had all of his prior failures and my admonishments in writing.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

The skids are greased.

I figured...your post was indicative of that. We all sometimes need a little affirmation that we are on the right track

[flatbutt]

Document everything in detail and have him sign any performance plans and all evaluations. Just my .02

[Zeke]

Seems like you have the ducks in a row, so make it friendly as possible and tell him you will give him a good recommendation based on his honesty in reporting his hours and maybe something else that his is satisfactory in. He will fit somewhere. If you really want to be a good guy, give him the equivalent of a week's take home pay. I'm sure you can put that on the books as an expense.

[herr_oberst]

As Barney Miller once said, "Compassion. Who needs it?"

[David]

We have a 60 day probation period but this is a large company so HR is involved in all terminations. We've only terminated a few new hires but probably should have terminated more.

My biggest issue with HR was one manager who thought we should give a new hire an improvement plan. How did they not understand that the employee was going to give their best in the first 60 days they would be downhill from there.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

My current technician has been cash flow negative for about a year now and I have lost well north of $30K keeping him. He has a great attitude, tries hard, shows up. Last week he actually made money for the company. So we'll see for the future.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by David

We have a 60 day probation period but this is a large company so HR is involved in all terminations. We've only terminated a few new hires but probably should have terminated more.

My biggest issue with HR was one manager who thought we should give a new hire an improvement plan. How did they not understand that the employee was going to give their best in the first 60 days they would be downhill from there.

Wouldn't that depend on a learning curve if that was the case?

What I see though, is that one that is not productive fairly quickly needs to be gone. I have limited experience in hiring because I needed good help and now when I did have help. When they get really good then they leave. It's not always for a better job with better pay, sometimes life gets in the way. So I never had any time to groom someone, although I did in several cases.

Always the same, for whatever reason, they moved on. I ended up just being a lone wolf.

[Arizona_928]

I think it is a language barrier. I work with a lot of international students with piss poor English. The ones with poor English are also quite incompetent. Seeing master's defenses that are purely memorized and any sort of questioning leads to awkward silence... A lot of fun.

This can come down to the supervisor not asking the right questions, fully vetting the education (E.g. private universities from SW Asia are worse than a public high school in Chicago), or not checking in enough on the employee... idk some people from other countries do not have the American work ethic or desire to do more than the bare min.

[URY914]

Wait until he come in at 8:07, and fire his ass for being late.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

I think it is a language barrier. I work with a lot of international students with piss poor English. The ones with poor English are also quite incompetent. Seeing master's defenses that are purely memorized and any sort of questioning leads to awkward silence... A lot of fun.

This can come down to the supervisor not asking the right questions, fully vetting the education (E.g. private universities from SW Asia are worse than a public high school in Chicago), or not checking in enough on the employee... idk some people from other countries do not have the American work ethic or desire to do more than the bare min.

I did have that situation. I had few Spanish speaking people work for me. I don't speak any other language so I depended on their English. One fellow always seemed to understand but as it turns out he was using only intuition to do what he thought I wanted done.

He moved to TN.

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by Zeke

I did have that situation. I had few Spanish speaking people work for me. I don't speak any other language so I depended on their English. One fellow always seemed to understand but as it turns out he was using only intuition to do what he thought I wanted done.

He moved to TN.

I had a battle in bct that was from Puerto Rico and didn’t know much English. DS gave a command, “yes DS!” and just stood there.
What did i just start tell you to do?! “yes DS!”
Start pushing, “yes DS!” and just stood there. He picked up on the smoke sesh pretty quick.

[DWBOX2000]

Make him a Vice President. That’s what they do where I work.