What to do when a veteran staff turns bad

Posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 8:55AM by

Jeff |

9 Comments

LP writes:

Without going into tremendous detail, two years ago I was made the general manager of my father's business as he went into retirement (and has since passed away). I know this business like the back of my hand, but dealing with the aspect of managing the veteran staff is monumental on a scale I could never have imagined. You see, these are all people who were highly trusted for many, many years; they were treated as family, and they learned to behave as such.

Well, the so-called "most honest staff in the world" is full of people doing drugs on the job, people stealing, and people who just think they are going to continue to do things the way they want despite my insistence on some rules.

They are complacent and lazy; they think that their stagnancy is the path toward continued sucess -- which also isn't that important to them. This appears to be what is going on. All I know is that I have grey hairs coming out on my head, and I've been working seven-day weeks for close to a year just to keep an eye on these finks.

Oh boy. I don't mean to sounds harsh, but fire them all, and fire them now. There is nothing that's going to destroy your father's legacy faster then letting a bad company culture take over like a cancer. All of the worries you have about ramping up a new staff and dealing with new people pale in comparison to having a screwed up company culture.

If you have the capacity to do it, I would hire a high quality recruiter to come in and to help devise a plan to hire a full replacement staff rapidly. If there are a few good apples among the bad, I would have them "re-interview" for the job along side the new candidate the recruiter brings, and then you can decide who you want to keep. You are better off erring to the side of letting a few good people go by mistake, rather than keeping a few bad people around due to fear.

I realize this will not at all be easy to do -- but like ripping off a band-aid, you're going to be far better off if you just rip once and are done with it. It's going to suck, I guarantee it. However, your only other option is to let the business die a slow and painful death while you pile up doctor bills from dealing with stress induced ulcers.

Save yourself the pain of doing that, and take the action that I suspect you already know is necessary. I would lay down money that says your customers also know that things have run afoul inside the organization, and they would probably breathe a sigh of relief to see that change finally took place.

Good luck. I can only wish you the best in what is a very difficult situation.

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