Here Comes the Cold
Oh, those dreaded words: Hiring Freeze. We often hear them around the time we get a new administration, and we’re hearing them this month. Everyone knows that hiring freezes are bad for government. The positions that become vacant during a hiring freeze may be the very most important positions in the agency. You are handed a random vacancy because of the vagaries about people leaving government, and sometimes you are left with poor performing employees who really should be the ones to go, but you’re afraid to fire them because bad help is better than no help at all. The bean counters are happy, but that’s about it. But let me share a moment with you. Years ago, after I had helped a manager fire a poorly performing toxic employee, I called her to see how things were going. “Oh, just terrific!” she said. “Our office productivity has gone up 50% in six months!” I told her that was fantastic and asked who she had hired to replace the faulty worker. “Oh, I didn’t hire anybody to fill the position. Once the toxic employee was out of the office, everybody started working better and harder. You see, she was bringing the whole place down just by coming to work every day.” Here at FELTG, we hope you never have to fire anybody. But if you do, keep this thought in mind: Sometimes things get better just by removing the problem employee, even if you don’t hire a replacement.
Stay warm out there –
Bill Wiley, FELTG President