Things you need to stop doing to your employees right now

illustration photo

1. Conducting background checks after bringing someone on board. This seems to be more and more popular. Don’t bother about that pesky paperwork, just get someone started – after all, time is money, right? In the past week, I’ve received two emails from people who accepted new jobs, began work, and then got fired within the week because they didn’t pass the reference check. Talk about wasting time and money. You still have to pay those people for working, so there’s no money saved here.

2. Forcing people to resign. You may think you’re being nice in giving an employee the option to resign, by demanding that he or she write a resignation letter. Just stop it. If the person deserves to be fired for a good reason, fire them. If it’s a layoff, or a generic poor-performance termination, or you just don’t like the person, you can give them the option of resigning, but honestly, you should just terminate the person, and don’t fight unemployment. Recruiters don’t look fondly on people who resigned without a new job lined up anyway. You’re not helping, and you’re a cheapskate who is trying to get out of a bump in unemployment costs.

3. Giving false performance appraisals. I don’t mean that you’re forging or plagiarising performance appraisals (although using the copy-paste method in which all your employees get the same “feedback” needs to stop as well). I mean reviews in which you rate someone highly and tell the person they’re doing great, and then three months later, you want to fire them and cite their “performance.” Someone who was a star three months previously deserves help. If you want to fire him or her so that you can hire your cousin, say so. If you want to fire them because you’ve hired a new manager who hates this person, consider why on earth you are getting rid of a trusted employee over a new person who has the maturity of a seventh grader. If it truly is a performance issue, why did you say your employee was doing great a few months ago? Be honest. Always.

Source: navigossearch.com ; Inc.com ; Linkedin.com ; forbes.com; Tlnt.com