Tim Sackett’s HR 101: How to Tell an Employee They Suck

Editor’s note: On occasion, we’ll highlight HR wisdom from long-time HR pro Tim Sackett, in his own inimitable style.

You have an employee who sucks, don’t you?

I know, I know; you’re wondering how I knew that, aren’t you?

Well, you came to this post and we all have employees who suck! (To My Own Dear Employees: This is for effect — none of you really suck! Just everyone else reading this post has employees who suck.)

I’ve been out on the road quite a bit lately meeting with HR pros. I meet with people who tell me “we can’t find talent,” but what I usually find is that it’s really,”we can’t get rid of people who suck, so we hire more people to cover up their suckiness.”

Like trying to get rid of your drunk uncle

Don’t feel bad. Almost every organization I know has a problem getting rid of people who suck.

It goers like this: We hire people. They become a part of the family. Then, we find out they suck.

Like your drunk uncle who ruins the holidays, these employees are similar. You don’t stop asking your uncle to come to Christmas, and we don’t ask these employees not to come back to work. So, the sucky employees stay employed.

We meet with them and have “conversations,” and tell them we need them to “step up” and “reach higher” and “give maximum effort.” What we never say is “Hey! Stop sucking!”

We don’t do this because we’re professionals. Also, we would never allow their managers to say this, because that could very well hurt the feelings of these employees who suck.

So, do you want to know how to tell an employee they suck?

3 ways to tell an employee they suck

Here are the three (3) ways you can do it:

Send them a personalized cookie with the words “Stop sucking!” It’s kind of like a Happy Birthday cookie, but instead replace Happy Birthday with “Stop sucking!” For those really outgoing, caring HR Departments you can actually order “Stop sucking!” cookie bouquets that spell this out in cookies baked like letters. How fun!
Offer FREE “Stop sucking” tattoos, but only to them.
Decorate their cube or office door after they leave at night so the next day when they come to work they’ll get a big “Stop sucking!” surprise.

These all sound ridiculously stupid, don’t they? (except for the cookie bouquet – that’s a good one)

They’re almost as ridiculous as not getting rid of employees who suck and hiring additional employees to cover up for an employee who doesn’t carry their own weight.

I get it. We don’t hire employees to fire them. We hire them to productive contributors to our organizations.

Here’s what happens when you tell an employee

The problem is sometimes, we make mistakes. Sometimes, our selection process fails. Sometimes, we make bad hiring decisions. Sometimes, the hire we thought so highly of, sucks. We usually know it right away, but we give it time, because we hate believing what our gut is telling us.

Telling an employee they suck is an awesome experiment, with no downside.

One of two things usually happens when telling an employee they suck:

They will either realize you’re right and you can start making departure plans; or,
They’ll want to show you your wrong and work to demonstrate they don’t suck.

For me, this has really gone about 50/50. I’m not saying that 50 percent of employees will stop sucking. They’ll try really hard not to suck, but at their core, they suck.

I love seeing the passion they will put out, and many times, that alone will bring them up to a performance level to at least get by. But, rarely do you go from sucking to rock star.

One last possibility …

There’s a third possibility that might happen when you tell an employee they suck — they won’t agree with you.

That’s OK. It’s not their call. You’re the leader. Your opinion is what counts.

If you feel they suck, they do, at least for you. Let them go so they can be “great” somewhere else — like for your competitor.

This was originally published on Tim Sackett’s blog, The Tim Sackett Project.