Know When It’s Time to Discipline or Fire an IT Staffer

It’s not a task that any experienced manager enjoys: confronting a staff member who suddenly begins exhibiting signs of disinterest or incompetence in his or her job or, worse yet, fails to work well with customers and/or co-workers.

Beck Beach, currently lead web and application designer and developer at Beck Beach, recalls a situation that unfolded when she worked for a major wireless carrier. “I was a lead developer/designer, and on my team there was a poorly performing employee,” she recalled. “He would come in at 11 a.m. and then leave really early at, like, 4 p.m.”

Beach was appalled

But the story doesn’t end there. Several weeks later, curious about the departed staffer’s fate, Beach checked her former colleague’s LinkedIn profile. She discovered that he was hired

Aslim believes that a slacking IT staffer lacks the motivation necessary to contribute to the improvement of organizational efficiency. Worse yet, such an individual will tend to ignore security policies while failing to support the level of service expected

Warning signs

Fortunately, few underperforming team members manage to go unnoticed for long. Staffers will always show signs when they are unmotivated or careless, observed Gustavo Carvalho, chief marketing officer of Web hosting service provider Copahost. “Some signs that a staffer is unhappy are, for example, arriving frequently late, not answering your messages on time, and not collaborating with ideas in meetings.”

An excessively passive attitude is another sign that a problem may be brewing. “Everybody gets tired sometimes, and it’s normal to be less productive at times, but if this [conduct] persists, something is ‘off’,” noted Nick Galov, head of content and community manager at HostingTribunal, a website that reviews and rates Web hosting services.

While it’s easy to place job demotivation squarely on a staffer’s shoulders, disinterest could also indicate that there’s something wrong inside the organization, such as a failing project that the team member feels is unrecoverable, despite his or her best efforts. Carvalho believes that an IT leader should always be attentive to staffers’ views on key issues. “[They] will give directions on what things inside the company could be improved,” he said.

A person’s facial expression, particularly if it reflects sadness or anger, can provide an important clue that a staffer is struggling to cope with some type of major work or personal issue. “To address the situation, the IT leader must first talk directly to the employee,” Carvalho said. If the problem isn’t work-related, the staffer should be referred to HR for support and counseling. “Problems with family, relationships, and debts are examples of issues that don’t have to do with your company,” he observed.

When dealing with a problem team member, it’s important not to jump to a conclusion before fully investigating the situation, Galov advised. “An open discussion is always a good first step to take,” he explained. He suggested asking the slacking staffer how he or she feels, simply to see if there are any objective reasons for the failing productivity. “Their response is my key indicator,” he said. “Unless they show the will to push harder, I usually know how it ends.”