Employee who drives me nuts!

[josntme]

AlphaDog wrote:
[quote=josntme]
One of the first things that I learned in management school was how to get rid of an employee with out firing them.

1. Assign them menial tasks and when they're thru discard whatever they did in front of them and give them another menial task. Repeat as necessary.

2. If possible give them irregular hours of work.

3. Move them around to different work stations repeatedly.

4. Be unsupportive.

One of these or a combination will most assuredly cause them to quit.

Everyone in management can't be the good guy.

Have you found any one of those to be more effective then others? Quicker? Responsible for getting you in trouble?
I was district manager for a national company's sales force and I found number 4 to be the most effective in that setting. The company didn't want to fire anyone because the fired employee could file for unemployment benefits, and of course they didn't want that. Believe it or not, the unemployment commission usually sides with the employee even if fired.

If it were me I would check with the "human resource" (or what ever your company calls it) and see what policies are in place to terminate someone. They should be able to give you guidance as to the steps necessary and the paper trail you must keep to cover your, and your company's, ass.

I have only fired one person, but have had many quit. I once had a woman that I told I was keeping records necessary to terminate her employment and she could see the records at anytime and I was coordinating all this with the human resource dept. She resigned within a month.

Lots of luck. It ain't easy being the bad guy, but the overall good of everyone and the company must come first. If someone isn't making you money, then you don't need them.

On edit: If you set around worrying if someone will retaliate, then you don't need to be in management.