Get rid of nightmare employees - fast

WHEN it comes to sacking staff, many bosses are actually pussies. Like Jacinda Ardern, they are soft muppets who keep giving extra chances to people who’ve proved in spades they don’t deserve their jobs.

A truth I discovered as an employer — soon after noticing the human species is damnably hard to manage – is that bad staff never get their marching orders soon enough.

Nightmares hang around inflicting damage long after they should have been out the door.

Our kindly Prime Minister wins the title ‘‘Muppet Boss of the Month.’’ Her weakness in not firing an inadequate minister promptly has made her look foolish. But the saddest part of this sorry affair was watching a continually evasive Clare Curran bumble through her last, humiliating Question Time. This was a woman destroyed not just by her own shortcomings but also by those of her dithering boss.

It was horrible, and perhaps Ms Ardern may have learned a lesson about the knockon human costs of keeping poor performers in jobs they’re not up to. Ms Curran’s ineptness also wreaked havoc on two other careers. Broadcaster Carol Hirschfeld lost her job, and IT man Derek Handley has the distinction of being sacked before starting.

Meanwhile, the Ardern Government ploughs on with the excitingly titled Employment Relations Amendment Bill. (2018). Its main job is to spoonfeed power and members to the unions. But with doctrinaire bloody mindedness, it also tinkers with one of the remaining sanities in employment law, being able to hire staff on a 90day trial.

This backwards step is such a stinker Labour has agreed to a NZ First compromise — wobblier small businesses with fewer than 20 staff won’t have to swallow this dead rat. Could you see a clearer acknowledgement this ‘‘reform’’ damages?

Employers paint 90day trials as being great for the battlers because they get a shot at proving themselves. But another truth — which employers won’t rabbit on about — is it helps protect them from their own bad hires.

The PM said smaller outfits were exempted because the poor ‘‘littlies’’ might have inferior recruiting skills. (Actually, your local fish shop will have better hiring practices than the Government showed in the Handley debacle).

What Ardern’s Labour doesn’t (or won’t) get is that no matter how smart their recruiting, firms often end up with a final candidate list where nobody is quite right for a job that must be filled. This forces higher risk appointments, and it’s why the 90day safety net became even more a godsend, as changing laws turned removing bad staff into an even riskier process.

For my sins, I ran a business for 17 years. I rarely needed the 90day clause, but any exec who’s been around the block will remember at least one excruciating moment when it became quite critical.

Mine came after hiring a needed marketing person. Among the ‘‘not quite there’’ candidates was a woman called ‘‘Celia.’’ Our Celia had graduated as the university medallist in a subject that was a little off beam to our needs. But the medal achievement made it seem worth training her, so she was hired on a good salary — with a 90day proviso.

Two months later the company struck a worrying ‘‘first.’’ We had to dismiss a seemingly mildmannered supervisor because of bullying claims. A fortnight on, there was a repeat. This time the star manager of a sales unit — a tough, wonderful woman — was facing an apparently credible bullying allegation.

It was too coincidental, and we realised the smiling Celia’s brightest talent was arranging stitchups of staff she didn’t like. Because she was destroying other people, I needed the means to act quickly. I invoked the 90day clause, and being Celia, she was immediately off to the lawyers, promising retribution. I soon discovered that a previous boss who’d sacked her quickly found the fraud squad investigating him. (The man was a saint, and worked from a wheelchair).

When child services came knocking on my family’s front door because of an ‘‘anonymous complaint,’’ I realised StitchUp Celia was so vicious I’d best cough up the financial settlement she demanded and hope she vanished.

A few weeks later I spotted Celia in a car park. But for the 90day rule, I’d now have been giving this appalling bitch written warnings and paying for her counselling. I watched her leave the car park, then wrote Celia her very own anonymous note, and stuck it on her windscreen.

Celia was exceedingly large — the size of a modest wedding marquee. My note carried but one boldly lettered word.

‘‘Fatso,’’ I wrote.

‘‘Fatso’’ is not suggested in any industrial relations manual and it’s certainly unparliamentary. But this sorely provoked boss enjoyed his childish moment. Immensely.

❛ Employers of course paint the 90day trial as being great for battlers, as it gives

them a shot at proving themselves. Another truth — which employers won’t rabbit

on about — is it helps protect them from their own

bad hires