The Hardest Task Posted on October 19, 2007 Robert C. Malenka (bio) offers tips on the unpleasant task of firing an employee.

So, managing personnel, just be aware as you embark on a career. It’s a very difficult task and it’s probably the hardest task that you’re going to face. And that’s not only me talking, that’s all my colleagues talking. When you’re a senior person like myself and you get together, a common conversation is complaining about the people who work with you.

You never complain about the ones who are good and really doing a good job. It’s the ones that — and the only other thing to be warned of is: one bad apple can really take a lot of time. And it is a very difficult task and endeavor. If somebody starts working with you and after six months or a year or however long it takes you to realize that this person just isn’t who you’re looking for, is not performing up to snuff, is not pleasant to interact with, and it’s a very difficult task to figure out how to have this person leave your research program and your lab, and there’s lots of issues.

There’s legal issues you may have to deal with. There are political issues. And I wish — I think one important piece of advice is if early on — which I still don’t do as much as I should — and it’s a very difficult, painful — difficult task because you have so many other tasks to do. But if you have an employee, whether it’s a graduate student or a post-doc or a technician who you really think isn’t performing up to your standards, as early as you start recognizing those signs you have to have a conversation with that person and bring them into your office and be fairly supportive but frank.

Then, you also have to start having a written trail, which I don’t do enough myself and I’ve paid the price. But after you’ve had that conversation, you have to remind yourself to write yourself a little memo with the date and put it in a folder: just a four-sentence little memo that, “I discussed with Joe or Jane today that I was disappointed in their performance or that I expected them to be working a little bit harder or that their interactions with this other person I thought were inappropriate and Joe or Jane acknowledged this.”

And if you really want to be safe, which again, it’s a very difficult thing to do and I don’t do it myself as much as I should, write that little memo and send the person you just talked to a copy just so you have a paper trail just for if you’re in the unfortunate circumstance, which doesn’t happen that often - it’s pretty rare where you really get a problem employee — you’re gonna need that paper trail to justify eventually asking this person to leave, especially at universities, which often make it very, very difficult to get rid of incompetent employees.

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