unCubeme

Here is a great article coming from CNN and CareerBuilder.com that talks about why bad employees get fired. As easy as it sounds to fire someone, it actually is not. I personally expected to hear about how screwed up companies policies make it to fire someone nowadays because of the fear of being sued. This article lists ten other reasons that I did not think of but once I saw it, it made complete sense.

First point they talk about how the employee has a relationship with someone higher up. This does not necessarily mean a romantic relationship but just any type. Almost all the jobs I have been at I have seen this situation happen. Sometimes the relationships are well known and sometimes they are not.

Second, they discuss on how the boss relies on the employee. I can’t see this as much because if an employee performed poorly all the time then why would the boss rely on that person unless of the situation above. It describes that the boss would feel that the poor performance is attributed to forces outside the employees’ control. This situation ties into point ten in which they say that the boss feels that employee is not really bad at all. Hmm then that just means someone else like to bitch.

Third point, they talk about how an employee’s cost to benefit ratio is actually high, meaning that they bring a lot of value without costing a lot. This is a harder situation to see since salaries are not public knowledge. I can see how some managers will take this approach. I like this situation because it works out perfectly for me since I feel that I am cheap labor!

The fourth and seventh points I am going to discuss together, respectively in which the boss thinks it could be worse with another employee and they boss doesn’t want to go through the hiring process. I really see this as the biggest motivating factor as they lose time and money on training a new employee and just like sports stars a new employee can be a big bust.

The fifth and eighth point I’m going to join together as well and respectively they are the boss is afraid of the employee and the employee knows something. The only way the boss would be afraid of the employee suing is if the employee knew something. The latter point on the employee knowing something relates to a situation I hate the most. The employee is the only person that knows how to use an ancient software or tool. In my world I have come in contact with some poor employees that hold the key to those ancient tools and create a HUGE bottleneck by not teaching someone else how to use that tool properly.

The sixth point that they make is that the boss feels sorry for the employee. This really puts a boss in a tough position if the employee has health or family problems but, if you work at a large company like I do, most people don’t fired anymore they just get pushed to different (lower) positions.

The ninth point really has me kind of scared as it talks about how the employee has everybody fooled. In this they describe how psychopaths make up 1% of the general population and that 3.5% of executives “fit the profile of the psychopath”, WOW, not cool. I really do see this situation occurring a lot since people are really good at putting a nice layer of bullshit on what they say.