In the discussion following my post about the Rubber Room, Willy K brings up the point that it's difficult to fire government employees. I don't argue with this—in fact, one of my biggest complaints about most arms of the government has been that they aren't sufficiently empowered to slough off its least productive employees.
But now that I work in the private sector, I've found that tossing people out the door isn't as common as you'd expect. Downsizing notwithstanding (which is somewhat more common), I find that firing someone for nonperformance or due to personality conflicts is much less common than you'd think.
I attribute this to three factors.
- The bar for entry is higher. Even Microsoft, a company which accumulates five figures worth of warm bodies each year, has comparatively rigorous hiring standards and puts serious scrutiny into ensuring only capable minds1 are let through the front door. It varies somewhat from group to group, but I can say that an interviewee for a full-time position in a software engineering group will be subjected to many hours of in-depth technical and soft-skill interviews from a whole range of different people in the product. That's not to say that any organization (government or not) hires people unqualified for their positions, but it's clear that most companies take hiring very seriously and, at Microsoft, it's treated as an organizational responsibility and not as "something HR can handle."
- Assessment and metrics are important. My experience is that the competitiveness (and reward environment) of western business make accurate performance assessment really important. While these metrics may seem like they're most useful for overachievers, it turns out that having the assessment mechanism in place gives managers the ability to identify employees with performance challenges, and to help pinpoint what the employee doesn't do particularly well. Knowing exactly who and why (and having the mandatory frank discussions to socialize that fact) makes it easy to address the issue without being underhanded about it.
- Rehabilitation is cheaper than rehiring. Once an employee has a year or two of experience, they become very costly to replace, even if their performance is below-par. From a people management perspective, it makes far more sense to really try to understand and solve a case of nonperformance than it does to boot someone out, lose a few years worth of experience, and take a risk on an external hire. And given that employees are hugely expensive (especially in an R&D environment) there's usually great organizational pressure to rehabilitate underperforming employees as quickly as possible. In fact, even non-manager individual contributors are rewarded for helping our peers be as productive as possible.
Of course, in contrast, one important difference between the public and private sectors is that someone's tenure in a government job is often seen as a reason to be promoted (i.e., you've been a GS-8 for 12 years—it's time for you to be a GS-9!) whereas in the corporate world, you don't get promoted until you've earned it (you're an "Engineer I" doing the work of an "Engineer III"—welcome to "Engineer II") and if you're not earning your promotions, you're prodded with the assessment and rehabilitation sticks until you're booted (you've been an Engineering Trainiee for 10 years without a promotion—bye). So there's one important difference that make the corporate pink slips a little more common.
Now there are nevertheless plenty of other ways to get yourself shitcanned, but I find that firing someone solely for nonperformance in the private sector isn't much more common than firing someone for nonperformance in a government job because in the corporate world, things just never get to that point.
1 Clearly I got my job through a clerical error. ... in my favor?
I think your comments are true in large places like Microsoft. There is a big fear of being sued so there needs to be lots of proof. I know this because I saw a very strage process when I did see one person get actually fired. I think giving people a reason to want to quit happens more often (but still rare).
I assume that firing based on nonperformance is more common in small companies where they can't afford dead weight (and there isn't a pot of gold to sue for).
I've only worked for large companies or the government so I don't really have any facts here.
Yeah, that's true. And even though I've worked for a small company, nobody there was ever fired. So much for useful data points in the small business sector.
At my company, we get to deal with forced rankings. Every year, every member of the company is ranked based on annual performance. You are either a 1,2, or 3, 3 being bad. In each department, 10% MUST be 1's, 80% 2's, and the bottom 10% are 3's. It doesnt matter if you are with a group of top performers or a bunch of slackers, thats the way it has to be. If you are ranked a 3 twice, you are out. The ranking also relates to your annual raise, 3's get nothing.
We have something similar for stock ranking: commitment and contribution rankings, one of which is organized into 20/70/10 buckets. You can read all about it at the "booted" link in the original post.
I think the strategy is similar at both companies--it's an exaggeration to say that it takes 10 years for Microsoft to fire an engineering trainee, but the point is that it's way cheaper to rehabilitate that employee than to can and replace him immediately. If the employee proves unrehabilitatable (ahem), then out they go.
Been out of town until today. Honored that I've inspired an entire post.
Wanted to discuss your points before I bring up another point of interest....ugh. I still sound like I'm at work.
The bar for entry is higher.
It can be but not always the case. I think it depends on the hiring process and who's in charge of hiring. Up until lately, there was about 4 ways of bringing people into our company due to all the rules in place about equal employment opportunity with veteran preference, etc. A lot of times, if the company wanted to hire a specific person, but that individual was not quite qualified, they could exploit one of these ways to bring them on. Who is in charge of hiring is also important. HR at our company only looks at certain things in a candidate to qualify him/her for a position (GPA, degree, keywords). It is up to a manager to use a fine tooth comb to weed out people who found a way to cram those keywords into their resume vs people who are actually qualified. some managers value specific technical skills above all while others other hire based on the ability to learn but don't already posses the technical knowledge. Though I don't have a direct problem with the second, it just may take a lot more training to catch those employees up to speed. The entire hiring process must be managed from looking for potential hires to training to be a productive members of a team. Deficiencies in the hiring process with proper mitigation strategies are acceptable, but if there is lack of oversight, those deficiencies may snowball into a big problem of hiring people not qualified for the job.
Assessment and metrics are important.
The year and nine months that I've worked there, I haven't been assessed yet. I was going to get assessed this last Dec, but they restructured everything so that assessment didn't count (and they wouldn't show me what was on it before destroying it). This is probably one of the biggest demotivational factors. I'm there, but how am I doing? How have I progressed? Have I even progressed?
Rehabilitation is cheaper than rehiring
Whole heartedly agree. Perhaps it is the field we work in. Though there are technical people, it is hard to find the right technical skills much less individuals who know how to use those skills correctly so losing one of these people would be a big headache. What about jobs that are more ubiquitous? What if we were hedge fund managers, call center reps, or even something in the entertainment industry*?
* writers, producers, actors (not porn**).
**well... porn if you want
Hey holy crap, that's a bitchin' response.
I think there's a lot to say for an company-wide commitment to hiring. I can't recall ever hearing about someone getting a job at Microsoft because "someone wanted them hired." We only pull in people that really do earn the team's approval.