Look Around HR

Could you imagine not being able to fire someone who has had five DWI’s in the past seven years? Could you imagine holding a discipline hearing (to determine if you could fire a bad employee) in a jail cell?

Many lawsuits arise out of a failure on the part of HR or management to properly document bad behavior. When the firing comes, the court is left with one side versus the other and no real documentation to justify the termination. Even in an “at-will” situation, improper terminations can cost the company big time.

In any class or seminar related to firing, they would remind you to document, document, and document. However, even the best documentation cannot save many principals and school districts when it comes to firing bad teachers.

For proof, check out this story about the stranglehold teacher unions have on many school districts and what some teachers can get away with.

From the Washington Post:

Few people know better than school superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer that disciplining a tenured teacher can be a long and expensive process.

An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges- her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.

The teacher will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired as she faces a likely prison sentence.

“It is very frustrating that the process takes so long,” Gerstenlauer conceded.

The case illustrates a nagging problem in school districts in New York and elsewhere around the country: firing bad teachers. It is also part of the ongoing debate over education reform and the role tenure plays in the process.

The story goes on to detail that the cost of any average termination in New York City is $250,000.

The most ridiculous comment in the article came courtesy of the president of the New York State Teachers Union: “Tenure provides the right to due process. It is consistent with the American way; a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

I would assume a fifth DWI is enough due process. I would assume pleading guilty is due process. But not according to the teacher’s union.

The Center for Union Facts was quoted in the Post article, and they have a lot of good information on their website and I encourage you to check it out.

You may or may not have heard that the New York Mets fired manager Willie Randolph earlier this week. The Mets, with the highest payroll in the National League, have been playing sub-500 baseball and famously blew a huge division lead last fall. When you factor this in, the firing of Randolph is not unwarranted or without good reason. The way the Mets went about it, and possibly the timing, may not have been the best though.

Newsday, a New York City newspaper, featured this column yesterday with HR pro’s who said the Mets made a number of mistakes in his firing.

From Newsday:

Strike one: Randolph got the word in the dead of night, 3,000 miles away from home and right after he had led the team to a 9-6 win over the Angels.

To translate, this would be the equivalent of terminating an executive (who lives and works on the East Coast) when he is on business on the West Coast. There are certainly instances when you may discover some cause for termination, but if it is built up over a period of time, try to be a little bit more compassionate and wait until he arrives home.

Strike two: If a person is to be dismissed for performance, you don’t wield the ax right after a big win, which in Randolph’s case was a big public win.

If you were building up a case to terminate an employee, you probably wouldn’t do it right after he successfully led his team on a big project. Granted, beating the Angels in June is not the equivalent of winning the World Series, but it was a win. If you done it after a losing streak- or even on a day off- it would have looked better.

Strike three: Experts said you don’t want employees to hear the news from outsiders, as some players did as they returned to the hotel.

In a position like this, you should probably call a team meeting to notify the players that Randolph has been fired immediately after it happened. The same is true for the office. It is much better to notify key employees and the workers reports in person than to let them hear it through the grapevine (or if you a professionally sports team, the media).

Did Randolph deserve to be fired? You can easily make the case that he did indeed deserve to be fired. But did the Mets going about it the right way? That would be a much tougher case to make.

Rob Diel worked in the Information Technology department at Chrysler for ten years, but was recently fired for a strange- but very legitimate reason. He posted Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli’s e-mail and office phone number in the comments section of a Detroit Free Press story on the newspaper’s website.

The story he was commenting on was about the decision for Chrysler to outsource several hundred IT jobs. Diel was expecting to lose his job at the end of May. The comment has since been deleted but here is what he said under the name “Chryslerworker:”

“Boycott Chrysler. If Chrysler is going to screw all the American workers, than (sic) it is only fair that America screws Chrysler. E-mail Nardelli and tell him what a great job he is doing.”

According to the Free Press, Nardelli began to receive scores of telephone calls and e-mails. Also, to make the situation for Diel worse- he did this on a company computer, which employees are not allowed to use for personal business.

Diel may have been losing his job in a month regardless, but he now has a recognizable name and a ton of bad publicity when he goes for his next interview. Why would an employer not think he is going to do the same thing if he gets upset about something at his next job? As this Google search shows, this is all over the web. Not exactly a wise move.