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should I let an employee resign instead of firing them?
A reader asks: I do most management in my division but have been having my assistant director, Mark, take on more supervision as a growth area. Some of our staff are co-supervised depending on work assignments. A junior employee in their first year has struggled to show up to meetings with other employees and clients. […] The post should I let an employee resign instead of firing them? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
A reader asks:
I do most management in my division but have been having my assistant director, Mark, take on more supervision as a growth area. Some of our staff are co-supervised depending on work assignments.
A junior employee in their first year has struggled to show up to meetings with other employees and clients. Mark brought the complaints to me, and I sat down with the employee to clearly go over expectations. Things didn’t improve. We met again in two weeks, and things actually seemed worse. We were clear that not showing up on time to meetings was a fireable offense if it continued. The employee threatened to resign, and we left it up to them before they came back and attempted to apologize. We gave them another chance, in part to get documentation in order, in part from a tiny hope they could turn it around. After a few weeks and one good follow-up, they stopped showing up again.
We scheduled the follow-up meeting to fire them (and first offer a chance for resignation, as the graceful thing). They knew it was coming, and four minutes before our meeting started I got a resignation letter in my inbox. I can’t say I was surprised, but I spent the meeting going over logistics. Termination paperwork stated it was voluntary and mutual.
For me, this is a win of an outcome — no drama, easy paperwork, and they’re gone. But Mark really wants to fire the person, even after they’ve resigned. He wants the employee to face “consequences,” while I’m of the mind that once they have resigned, it’s not our job to mentor or supervise them. We’ve had multiple conversations about expectations and how if they didn’t get it beforehand, another conversation now won’t help.
Mark’s response makes me anxious to give him more management authority, as it plays into a bit of a punitive streak he has (he would call it a justice streak). Did I handle this right? How should I move forward?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
The post should I let an employee resign instead of firing them? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
