When to fire a bad hire

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi dogs. Welcome to the Untrein B podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Imna. Well, hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Entree MD podcast. And today we are going to talk about some big people things, right? When to fire a bad hire. And I didn't know that till I just said it that it rhymes, but hey, here we are, right? Okay. Now, this is one of those things that nobody really likes doing, except you're a sociopath. But nobody's like, yay, I'm so excited. I get to fire people, right? Nobody really wants to do that. However, one of the most damaging things you can do to your company is leave somebody who needs to be fired on staff. Okay. And so this is something that you may not like to do, but it's very important that you do do when you need to. And it is one of the best things you can do for your company. All right. So we're going to talk about it and we're going to talk about how to do it properly. I am not going to be addressing any local laws or anything like that. So you do want to, you know, take a look at your laws if your state is at will and all of those kind of things. And if there was a contract and blah, blah, blah. So you want to look at that. I'm not really going to go into that. I'm going to be talking about the general principles, the way to look at it, and the way to approach it. Okay. All right. So when to fire a bad hire. Now, first of all, before you go in and tell them you can no longer work here, the first thing you need to do is you need to deal with your involvement. Okay. I have been guilty of this. Many people have been guilty of this. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But the starting point is not the employee. The starting point is the employer. Okay. So before we even get into hiring the person, we're going to deal with your involvement in this whole bad hire thing. Okay. And then there are a number of things to look at there. First of all, was this person trained? Like the thing that makes us say, I want to hire, I want to de-hire this person. Did this person get the training they needed to thrive on the job? Right. Because if they didn't get their training, then we are blaming them for a problem that is not really their problem. It's not an employee problem, it's an employer problem, right? And so was their training? Okay. Was there a structure? So, you know, for instance, did the person have support? If this is a physician, for instance, that you hired in your private practice, did they have an MA to work with? Did they have the computers they needed? Did they have the equipment that they needed? Right. Did they have what they needed? Did they have the processes in place, right? Like, so say, for instance, you're not private practice, say you are a coach. Do you have your processes in place? Oh, when a new client comes in, how they're onboarded, how the coaching calls are supposed to go, and all of those things. Do you have that in place? Because if the if it's not there, then you're blaming the employee for something that they didn't stand a chance to thrive at, right? It's also things like accountability, right? For instance, if you tell this person, I'm firing you, are they gonna be shocked? Because if they're going to be shocked, that is not there, there may be employee problems, but there's definitely an employer problem, right? Have we had the meetings with them to say, okay, these are your KPIs, these are the things you're being measured on, this is how you're doing, this is where I need to see improvement. Are we having those conversations? Are we giving them a chance to improve, right? Because a lot of times, and I have done this too, we expect our staff to be able to read our minds, right? We expect that they will just know that this is what a good job looks like. No, we have to be clear. This is when you do a good job, this is what it means. And so, for instance, in my private practice, that means you're doing on average 25 patients a day. You're working on having turnaround times an hour or less, you know, 80% of the time, it means that you're doing the work to build your panel. That looks like a good job. And so if I then look and I'm like, okay, let's talk about your panel. Like we see that 80% of your patients do not have follow-up appointments scheduled. And the ones that were scheduled because the MA, you know, your MA did what they needed to do, but are you advocating for them to come back for their appointments and things like that? Like that's a conversation to be had. Do you see what I'm saying? And so are you holding them accountable? Okay, because if you're not holding them accountable, accountability, like feedback is the breakfast of champions, they're gonna need that to know, okay, this is where I'm missing it. Otherwise, they may be doing a bad job and they're thinking they're doing a good job because you didn't tell them. And so you wanna, you wanna look at that. You want to look like, look at am I allowing sanctioned incompetence? Meaning, I know this person is incompetent. Everybody knows this person is incompetent, but I'm not addressing it. I'm not holding accountable, I'm not doing any of that. It's so damaging for your culture, right? And so the first place is what is my involvement in this whole bad hire situation, right? Is the person a bad hire because I have not given them the training, the structure, the processes, the support, the accountability that they need to thrive. Okay. So we address that first. And if there are tweaks to be made there, it could be as simple as now we have a weekly meeting where we're doing this is where we want you to be, this is what you're doing. Great, this is where we can improve, right? Like things like that. We take care of that first. Okay. The first place to look at is we we look at ourselves, not the employee. Okay. And this is whether it's a doctor in your private practice, it's a VA, it's a coach that works in your business, it's a finance person, doesn't matter. It's the same process. Okay, so that's the first thing to look at. Now the second thing is to deal with the specific issue, right? And so this goes back to now we talked about accountability, but that's as an ongoing thing that, you know, something that we do with our, with our with our employees. But here we're talking about, okay, so what is the issue, right? What is the issue? What what is so maybe you have a staff member who's always coming late, okay? Or you have a staff member who's getting really bad reviews and there's a theme, right? There's a theme there. The person is rude, no bedside manner. Or you have a VA who is doing maybe social media for you, and there are lots of typos. And whatever that is, like what is the thing that makes you say this person is a bad hire? Now is the time to deal with the issue. So meeting with the person, okay, this is why we hired you. These are the outcomes that we're asking you to produce, these are the areas of improvement, and so you develop a plan to improve together, right? Like, so this is what we're going to do together to make this work. Okay. And then you and you schedule the next meeting. And this is something you're going to be relentless, you're going to be holding them accountable and all of those things. Now, for somebody who is actually a good hire, but maybe the processes weren't in place, or you didn't think they'll be held accountable, or they didn't even realize that was a problem, those people are going to turn around, right? They're going to turn around fairly quickly, right? And you can end up going from this person was a really bad hire to this person is one of my best people. Or maybe in the process of doing that, you may realize that that's not that person's strength, area of strength at all. But their area of strength is in this place where I actually do have a need, and you tweak their position a little and then they thrive, right? But the conversation needs to be had. There's going to be some working through. I am phlegmatic at my core, which means my natural bend is to avoid conflict. And so what I just described, like the newbie entrepreneur version of me would not do that. Like I'd rather, I'd rather just let them do whatever than do that. Okay. And I'm saying that because I know there are other people like me. Okay. And one of the things as an entrepreneur, you do is that you run towards conflict. You don't run away from conflict anymore. You head, you face it head on, right? And when I say head on, I don't mean fight. I mean you open the doors of communication, you have those difficult conversations and all of that. That's what we do as entrepreneurs. The better you are at it, the better your company will be, the more you will serve, the more you'll earn. Okay. So you deal with the issue. Okay. Now, you may look at this, you've dealt with your involvement, you've dealt with the issue, and it just is what it is. Okay. It is what it is. This person needs to go. The idea is fire quickly. Okay. And you know, you may be like me, I went into mourning because I'm like, oh my goodness, it's so difficult. I don't want to do it, and all of that stuff, and just let it linger. The longer a bad hire stays in your company, the worse your company culture would be. The worse the experience your customers and patients would have, the bigger of a drain it will be on you. You just need to get the person off the bus. And this is not about being mean, because if you've done all these things and they're not a fit, if they're not a fit, they're not a fit, right? And so it's better for you to release that person so they can go to a company where they would be a fit and where they can thrive. Right? And so it's a disservice to your company, it's a disservice to the bad hire, it's disservice to your other team members. It is such a big disservice to you to keep somebody who needs to get off the bus on the bus. Okay. So we're dealing with the with the bad hire, it is fire quickly. And of course, do it in a way where you preserve their dignity and all of this. This is not about an emotional, I'm mad at you kind of thing. Just de-hire them quickly. Okay. And then move on and get the team member that you need and take your business to the next level. Okay. It will most likely hurt if you're a normal human being. It will hurt when you do it. But my goodness, will it be so much better? Okay. So you start from you. What is my involvement in all of this? You deal with the issue, you deal with the bad hire. And sometimes, sometimes you'll be able to save the hire and you'll be so glad you did. I've seen this happen so many times. And some other times, they just need to go. Okay. All right. So that's what I got for you. So if you have, if you have a great team, you just want to learn this. So if you needed it, you would use it. If you have a bad hire, now is the time to put your coveralls on and get to work. Okay. And if you if the person ends up being someone who is a great asset to your company, wonderful. You just save the person, you turned it, turned it around. But if they're not, de-hire quickly. And I am sending you virtual hugs because I know this is not the easiest thing to do, but you can do this. Okay. So go do this, go build teams. But because remember, if you want to run a business that truly gives you financial freedom and time freedom, you will run a business that is run by a team. So the team thing, we're going to need to figure it out. We're going to embrace it all, the hiring, the firing, the building company culture, all of that stuff because we want to build companies that serve us and not the other way around. Okay. And yeah, we want to build companies that serve us and not the other way around. Right. So thank you so much for listening. And I will see you on the next episode of the Ontree M Day podcast. Do not forget to share this with a friend. They will thank you forever. See you next time. Hey, if you love listening to the Om Train Day podcast, I want to invite you to join Om TrainD on Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to omtraind.com forward slash on demand, and I'd love to have you join us. See you on the inside.