Firing Employees

Jack Welsh, America's most admired CEO of 2007, says firing employees without warning is cowardly. His view is that if there are problems with an employee, management should immediately take the employee aside and give them a warning. If employees are gently warned over a long period of time it should be no surprise to them when they are fired. Mr. Welsh says experience shows that when they do fire the employee there is little emotion blowback in that moment. Taking his view a little farther, firing is about fairness to the employee and the employer. There should be protocols in place to make sure employees know where they stand at all times. Managers who do not follow protocols lack a certain fitness and professionalism to hold their own jobs. The idea here is to filter out arbitrariness in the firing process. This then minimizes the fears of other employees who continue to work productively. Employees must see a relationship between the issuance of warnings and firing. The employer in doing so demonstrates that it does consider the feelings of the employees and will not act to fire someone unless there is a good reason. Ethicacy and reason in all aspects of human life work together.

Small Business Owners

The problem with Mr. Welshe's assessment of firing is that it does not consider the intimate circumstances of a small business. Here, an employer might have one or two employees. Over a year or two of time the employer and employee get to know the weakness of the other. Weakness in an employer is generally taken as a sign of weakness, thus the clever employee will gradually take more and more liberties. The business owner wanting to be a nice guy or girl simply cannot bring themselves to discipline the employee. The employee knows this and takes full advantage of the fact. As time passes the boss gives out little warnings and exclamations of frustration. The only practical method of stopping the encroachment of the employee is to wait for the employees to exceed an emotional threshold and in a burst of anger fire the employee. Here, the employee as played with the emotions of the proprietor to the point the boss revolts in anger and fires the employee. The employee knows what they are doing. But they are tampering with human nature. When people are manipulated and exploited it is only natural for some to violently react to the manipulations. So, the ethically of firing someone without warning might be somewhat different than in a larger company of ten or more employees. If the employer stays in business for a long time it is ethically incumbent on them to recognize the role of a responsible manager. They must learn to stop procrastinating when it comes to discipline an employee. The right of the very small businessman to fire on short notice has its limits as the fitness of the employer comes into question.