Welcome to part 4 of our little mini-series about how to fire an underperforming employee. No one enjoys letting someone go, even when it’s the right decision. Staff members are often friends, and in a church context can even feel like family, so firing someone feels like much more than just an organizational decision. Because of this, we have to make sure we go through a thorough and supportive process before we pull the final trigger.
If you haven’t read the first three emails in this series, I’d recommend you go back and do that before reading this final email. If you are thinking of firing someone, skipping straight to the final step is a recipe for disaster. I highly encourage you to take your time, go through the process, and make a wise, thoughtful, and prayerful decision.
Assuming all of your attempts to support the employee have failed, it’s important that you don’t drag your feet on making the final decision. It’s an easy thing to put off; you are always busy and there are other tasks you can talk yourself into prioritizing. You have to resist this temptation. Make the call and set the meeting.
In the time between making the decision and having the final meeting (which by the way should absolutely be a meeting, not an email or phone call), there are a few things you need to do.
First, make sure everyone who needs to know beforehand, knows beforehand. Depending on your structure, this could mean your elders, senior staff members, and anyone who would be immediately impacted by the decision. For instance, if you are letting your Children’s Ministry Director go, you may schedule a meeting with any staff members who report to them at the same time or immediately before or after you meet with the staff members themselves. This ensures that information is communicated in a timely and accurate manner and done so by people you trust.
Second, be prepared for the meeting. If you followed the steps leading up to this, you should be equipped with objective, measurable reasons why you have made this decision. You should be able to track a timeline of meetings, communicate clearly with the employee, and point to hard data that explains your reasoning. Have all of that with you when you sit down, but don’t lead with it. These reasons should be used as a backup if the meeting goes in that direction, but ideally, it won’t. The employee should be keenly aware of what has been expected of them and know that they have fallen short of expectations.
Third, make your decision regarding severance and communicate that clearly in the meeting. If you are going to tie their severance to specific deliverables like returning their computer, cleaning out their office, or handing off specific details to whoever needs them, make that clear as well. All of this should be written down so it can be given to the employee near the end of the meeting. There is probably a discussion here about NDAs and other conditions of severance, but that’s a topic for another day.
Fourth, choose who is going to attend the meeting. Never fire an employee by yourself! I hope this goes without saying, but please do not walk into this meeting (or any of the previous ones for that matter) by yourself. You need to bring along another elder, your XP, their boss, or someone else that makes sense. Church is not business, so I would recommend bringing in at least one non-staff elder or high-level deacon to be present as well. Brief them ahead of time if they haven’t been very involved in the process, but their job isn’t to talk, just to observe and to be another witness down the road if things go badly.
Fifth, pray that the meeting goes well, but expect that it won’t. Go into the meeting expecting that the employee will respond humbly, graciously, and maturely. This puts you in a better posture than if you go in suspiciously and increases the likelihood that the meeting will go well. Much of what I’ve told you to do above only matters if things don’t go well; it’s your backup plan.
OK, it’s time for the meeting. How should it go? Here is a roadmap.
First, communicate to the employee that you need to meet with them and make the time no more than 24 hours in advance. You don’t want them stewing on things or trying to preemptively communicate with other people.
Second, tell them you need to meet with them to review their PIP. As we said last week, a good PIP has laid out a plan that includes dates for accountability. If you have done this, then the final meeting should function as just the last step of the PIP.
Third, tell them who is going to be there. I try to avoid surprises whenever possible so make sure they know in advance that this is a group meeting.
Fourth, Don’t beat around the bush. Sit down, pray, and then tell them why you are there. Say something like, “Justin, we’ve been working through this PIP with you for six months now and we’ve had regular check-ins as we’ve tried to support you in this position, but we have not seen the improvement we have hoped for. In light of this process, we have made the decision to transition you off the team, effective immediately.” It doesn’t do anyone any good to belabor the point, just get to it.
Fifth, lay out the next 30-90 days really clearly. Tell them what you expect them to do and what you are going to do for them.
Sixth, tell them that you love them and want to support them, and then give them a chance to respond if they want to.
Assuming the employee handles all of this with maturity, this meeting may only last 15-30 minutes, it doesn’t need to be a protracted experience. Say what you need to say, be clear and to the point, give them a chance to respond or ask questions, and then wrap up the meeting. Don’t keep talking just because it feels like it didn’t take very long and you want to fill the space. That’s when you are likely to say something you regret later on.
That’s it, that’s the process. From here, anything can happen. They can go home and tell their spouse and that spouse can lose their mind and want to blow everything up. They can confide in a friend who loves them and wants to defend them and they can blow everything up. They can go home, have too many drinks, get on the internet, and try to blow everything up. I’ve seen it all.
All you can do is follow a process that is wise, godly, and most importantly, documented. None of this will protect you from a sinful or immature reaction on the part of the employee, but it can mitigate the damage.
So, if you have an underperforming employee, go back to the first email and start the process. However it ends, you won’t regret having a process.