In what world is it easier to fire someone than to fix them? Because in any sort or management I’ve been involved with here in Denmark it’s always the exact opposite.
When you fire someone. You tax HR and yourself with the process both of letting someone go and finding their replacement. You have to pay their salary 3-6 months going forward as well as all the paid vacation they may have saved up. Most importantly you tax your team with the added resource drain of covering the tasks as well as integrating the replacement. You also risk damaging morale, and worse, you risk increasing employee anxiety as even the best employee can have inferiority issues.
That being said, the basic mantra in management should always be that you can get rid of anyone, it’s just a matter of cost. So if you need to fire someone, then you need to fire someone.
Personally I prefer building people to the point where they will leave you themselves, but, that’s a style or management that isn’t present in a lot of companies because it takes a corporate culture that is very hard to maintain in large organisations and require quite a lot of management talent in small organisations. It’s also something that is incredibly hard to do as a single manager if the culture is against you.
Swede here, it is a different world in the US. Firing is easy, two weeks at the most to get someone out. The other way holds true though, it is equally difficult to find replacements but usually once you do, they can join sooner than in Scandinavia since employees too can leave within a days or at most 1-2 weeks.
In Iceland there's a mutual 3 month termination notice for most positions. I just switched jobs and had to do a whole lot to be let go 6 weeks after I gave notice. My employer absolutely had the right to retain my services for the full 3 months thou.
I'm curious how this works in practice. A conscientious employee will honor the 3 month term, of course. But if there is animosity, or a lack of trust, or a feeling of betrayal etc. etc. how does the company keep the employee working for those 3 months? As opposed to having a desk vacation?
We have 2 month notices here. Most people do knowledge transfers in their notice period. It's harder to slack off if your task is pair coding or explaining stuff to your peers. We waived this period for a few people, because they were negatively impacting morale, but they still got their salary. It's just the cost of firing someone.
Nobody wants to leave on bad terms if it isn't strictly necessary. In the best case a hire will be made and some overlapping time will occur so a hand-off can be executed.
Germany also has 3 months notice starting from the next month you give it or something similar? I work remotely in a german company and i was shocked to hear this. We have new hires from Germany who we were expecting them since xmas-January..
>Personally I prefer building people to the point where they will leave you themselves
Does Denmark not have constructive dismissal laws? Making changes that force someone out is an easily winnable unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal, at least for the UK. And that costs more than just firing them for bad performance.
Denmark absolutely has such laws, but I think OP meant that they seek to develop their employees to the point that they outstrip their original role, not to constructively dismiss them
>In what world is it easier to fire someone than to fix them?
You clearly haven't met Austrian management. It's nearly at will employment (in theory it's not, but in some domains many companies know and do skirt around the law to get rid of employees quickly without getting sued).
Once the management decides they don't like you anymore, you're given your standard one to three months notice, then you're gone. I asked a lawyer, and they said the employer can fire your without any reason as long as they give you your contractual notice period.
My favorite example is them using Jira velocity charts to fire the one with the slowest curve. You get a warning (p.i.p.) telling you your velocity needs to catch up, then after two sprints you get your notice handed to you.
OTOH, there are other EU countries where firing people is really difficult. Here it's just a rubber stamp thanks to decades of pro-business politicians elected in power who eroded workers' rghts.
I’ve worked under very trigger-happy leaders in startups here in the UK. I think in the first two years of employment it’s fairly easy. Given typical engineering tenures, this basically describes everyone.
When you fire someone. You tax HR and yourself with the process both of letting someone go and finding their replacement. You have to pay their salary 3-6 months going forward as well as all the paid vacation they may have saved up. Most importantly you tax your team with the added resource drain of covering the tasks as well as integrating the replacement. You also risk damaging morale, and worse, you risk increasing employee anxiety as even the best employee can have inferiority issues.
That being said, the basic mantra in management should always be that you can get rid of anyone, it’s just a matter of cost. So if you need to fire someone, then you need to fire someone.
Personally I prefer building people to the point where they will leave you themselves, but, that’s a style or management that isn’t present in a lot of companies because it takes a corporate culture that is very hard to maintain in large organisations and require quite a lot of management talent in small organisations. It’s also something that is incredibly hard to do as a single manager if the culture is against you.