To Fire or Not To Fire?

6 replies
Hi All,

Was having a few small problems during the week with one of my outsourcers. Usually they are great to work and very good at their job but I noticed progress was slow this week and not much was getting done.

I sent an email but got no reply, so I followed it up with a strongly worded one asking what was going on. To cut a long story short my employee had a family situation to take care of and so asked their friend to keep on top of their work for them while they went away to sort everything out.

Now I'm not the baddest guy in the world and if I received an email saying they wouldn't be in for a few days I wouldn't have cared. But the fact they didn't tell the truth from the get-go and tried to fool me by having their friend cover for them should I just give them the bullet and fire them?

I know a lot of you would have more experience with this sort of thing than me so what would you advise?

I know a job means a lot to those people so I don't want to act too rashly and just give them the bullet and ruin their life:confused:

Cheers for you help.
  • Profile picture of the author webcosmo
    Its hard to find expert and responsible employees.
    If he was good in the past make it clear to him that you like to be notified earlier when there is an emergency in future.
    Also I would always keep a backup employee.
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  • Profile picture of the author Noel Cunningham
    Ya, I'm leaning more towards keeping them than firing them at the moment. I could easily get someone else but it takes time to train them in and get them up to speed.

    Def have to make it clear to them that what they did was not cool. Essentially my outsourced employee outsourced themselves - I think the joke is on me
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  • Profile picture of the author hashbury
    I wouldn't fire the outsourcer, Tell them what you told us, how you didn't like them lying to you. I personally would dock their pay, and let them know if something like this happens again, let me know so we can work something out or we will let you go.

    Take this with a grain of salt though, because if your outsourcer is doing something that is hard to train them in, you might want to be careful as to not lose them.

    I have an outsourcer that took almost two months to train with some very complicated task. I know if I lost her I would be out 2 to 3 months work while training someone else.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    I believe in compassion. People have problems and I try to work with them when I can. Like we employers are not the enemy. Still, there are those workers who do not get the job done and always have excuses. Remind this worker that they are important and critically vital to your organization, but that they need to communicate with you more.
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  • Profile picture of the author MidlandsMarketer
    I don't think they tried to 'fool you' by having someone take care of it for them, I think that it was an honest attempt to make sure that you received results in their absence.

    On the other hand, maybe I'm being too kind.

    Either way, since this is a first offense, as it were, then I'd lean towards the 'keeping' route as well. If they've delivered quality results in the past then I would make it clear that this can't happen again, but continue with the arrangement I already had.
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  • Profile picture of the author Noel Cunningham
    Ya, ok I'll def give them another chance. What p*ssed me off was the fact that they didn't feel they could come to me and say "hey, I have this problem...." I would have been totally fine with it...

    I've never fired anybody before so I won't start today. I'll give them a second because up until now they have really been great to work with.

    I'll just spell it out to them that "Honesty is the Best Policy" and start with a clean slate on Monday.
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