By Steve Moran

Your worst employees are the ones running your organization. They are the ones running your senior living community. This ends up betraying the very purpose of your organization.

What Happens 

Here is what happens: You have team members who are not very good, whom you kinda, sorta want to fire.

But You Don’t!

You know you should — that these team members are misaligned with your mission, that they are dragging down the entire organization — and yet

you don’t fire them because …

  • They might sue you for some kind of discrimination.
  • You hate firing people.
  • You worry that you won’t be able to find a replacement.

I get it.

I run a small organization, and so I don’t often have to let people go, but the last couple of times I did let people go, it was super unpleasant. They felt I was being unfair, that I was betraying a friendship, and if I’m honest, I felt like I was betraying a friendship.

The Cost

When you keep your worst employees, you in effect hand them control of your company. They set the standard for other employees’ behavior. They set the standard for attitude. They make it difficult or impossible for you to move the organization forward.

A Story

A while ago I was told a story about a new community that was in the fill-up phase. They had a great sales team that was doing a really good job getting contracts in a tough, competitive market. The executive director was terrible. Didn’t follow through, didn’t manage staff well, and made it hard to move-in.

Corporate leadership talked to the executive director about the problems, and the response was not to fix things but to threaten to sue the corporation. The threat worked. The building occupancy stalled out, team members were discouraged, the few residents in the community were unhappy.

But the company wasn’t getting sued.

It was foolishness. Ultimately the company was going to have to terminate the employee who was likely going to sue no matter what. The delay cost the company many tens of thousands of dollars each month they let the thing drag on.

Go fire that person who needs firing. Your residents will thank you; your teams will thank you. It will be tough for a few days, and then you will wake up and realize your life is so much better.

Your worst employees are the ones running your organization. They are the ones running your senior living community.