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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini…

Gini Dietrich: I’m so excited

Chip Griffin: you’re fired.

Gini Dietrich: I knew you were going to fire me.

Chip Griffin: Maybe not, because if I fire you, then I have to just talk all by myself, so that might be too much work for me. So maybe I’ll put you on a PIP instead and we’ll just think about it and then we’ll come back and figure out if it makes sense.

No, I don’t know about that either. I just don’t know what to do.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Hmm. Well. I guess you could find a replacement. Do you have a replacement?

Chip Griffin: I don’t,

Gini Dietrich: well start there.

Chip Griffin: I don’t know that anybody else would, would wanna put up with having to do this with me every week, so that could be a problem.

Gini Dietrich: Truth be told, it is kind of fun, so people would be missing out, but I don’t wanna be fired.

Chip Griffin: Okay. Well. I’m fine. I won’t fire you. You’re unfired.

Gini Dietrich:  Okay, great. Woohoo.

Chip Griffin: So we are gonna talk about firing, but I, it’s not about firing either one of us, it’s about firing employees.

And I guess I’ll let you set this one up, but it, it’s a, a question that showed up in an online forum about an underperforming employee. I think that’s fair to say.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And an owner trying to figure out what to do about it.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, yeah. The, the gist of it is that there’s an over an underperforming employee, with a terrible attitude who refuses to do work.

She gives it back to her manager regularly. She doesn’t share information. She hoards stuff. But my friend was like this is a problem. She needs to be fired, but we don’t have an immediate replacement and it will put her work on others. And I was like, okay. She’s already, other people are already doing her work, especially if she’s giving it back to her manager.

Other people are already doing her work. And the, the way I look about the, at these kinds of things is the team is already frustrated by the time it gets to you. The team is super frustrated with this human being. They don’t wanna do their work anymore. They’re tired of, of standing out for them. They’re tired of helping out.

And so they’re looking to you to be the leader. They’re looking to you to make the tough decision. And when you waffle like this, they lose respect and trust in you because you’re not able to make that decision. So trust me when I say that, they would much rather you fire them and take the extra work than to keep going in this manner.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, I mean, I’m, as we say at the end of every episode, it depends, you know, I, I think there are things you need to, to think about here. And there have certainly been occasions where I’ve held on to employees until I had a replacement because I, I needed the bandwidth, right? Sure. But there’s a difference in what you’re describing here or what your friend describes where I, I think of this as a diseased employee, if you will.

Yes. Right. Because they, they have a bad attitude, which in almost all cases affects the rest of the team.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And so it’s not that they’re just not as productive as they could be, but still get along well and, you know, kind of try their best. We’ve all had team members, I’m sure over the years that fall into that category where you’d like to replace them, but they’re not, they’re not doing harm.

They’re just not, they’re not living up to the potential that you would like to see. Those are cases where I think it can make sense to, to make sure you have a replacement lined up before you take action. Sure. But in a case like this where you have someone who is actively contributing in a negative way to the business.

I’m, I am much more a fan of just rip that bandaid off and be done with it. Because to your point, your team is already looking at you and saying, why aren’t you doing something about this?

Gini Dietrich: That’s right. Yep. They are. And I think if you, you can’t do this from an HR perspective, but if you polled your team and said, what do you think? They’d all be like we don’t know why she’s still here. Like, come on.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Please do not treat this like Survivor. Do not take a vote of the team. Right. As to whether someone stays or goes. That’s that is

Gini Dietrich: it’s a bad idea.

Chip Griffin: It is derelict of duty. It may well be illegal or at least problematic. Just, no, don’t do that.

Gini Dietrich: But if you did, they would all vote her off the island.

Chip Griffin: Yes. More often than not, when you terminate an employee, the other team members that you have will be like, oh, finally.

Gini Dietrich: Finally. Yeah. I also think you’re right that when you have somebody who’s negatively affecting the organization, they, you know, it’s the bad apple, but spoils the whole lot, right?

So then they start to influence how other people feel. Correct. And maybe someone was feeling a little burned out, or maybe somebody was annoyed about something. Well, now they’re listening to this person go on and on and on all day long. And they start, that little annoyance becomes something bigger and all of a sudden you have a bigger cultural issue on your hands than just one terrible employee that you should just rip the bandaid off and get rid of.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant that, you know, to go through it, but it’s, it’s important and it will help your business overall. One of the other questions that I believe was asked in this particular scenario was, should there be a PIP? Please don’t do PIPs. U