You’re No Longer a Culture Fit
At-will employment, performance plans, and a chance to be heard
“You’re no longer a culture fit and today will be your last day.”
In the 49 states with at-will employment, this is an acceptable and legal reason to fire an employee. It also happens to be the easiest way for a manager to get rid of an employee without having to justify their decision further.
What is at-will employment?
At-will employment means that an employer can terminate an employee at anytime and for any reason, or for no reason at all (except due to discrimination based on protected classes). Employees can also quit their job at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Neither party takes on legal consequences in this arrangement.
Genuine culture fit mismatches are a good reason to let someone go. The employee could be combative with colleagues and customers, doesn’t complete tasks when they say they will, and hasn't improved despite coaching and a performance plan.
But it’s also a great “get out of jail free card” for managers to get rid of an employee that they just don’t like or don’t want around.
It’s not against the law to fire someone because you don’t like them personally.
Unless the manager explicitly says they’re firing you because of race, gender, religion, pregnancy, or another protected class, you’ll have little recourse.
Of course, employees also quit with no notice and for no reason as well. This helps the worker if they need to get out of a hostile environment or have a better offer elsewhere.
This situation is challenging for employers, especially small businesses that struggle to keep operations going until they hire someone new. But for a terminated employee, suddenly losing their source of income and health insurance is much worse.
Is anyone protected from at-will termination?
There is one type of employee that is protected from this type of termination and that’s union workers. Collective bargaining agreements typically have rules that ensure an employee can only be fired with “just cause.” With more and more workers attempting to unionize and going on strike, there’s a growing movement to protect workers from wrongful termination, bullying, and low wages.
“Cleaning house” as a new manager
When a new manager is hired for a team, they may decide to “clean house.” I think we can all read between the lines about what this phrase implies – some employees are trash. Another way to put this is, “dead weight.” I think it’s disrespectful to talk to your team about terminated colleagues in these terms.
New managers have a lot to prove and see their new team as the way to make their mark. They have a vision for what they want the team to look like, and people in mind that they want to hire from past jobs. The most popular approach to cleaning house is performance plans.
Performance Plans
The best way to get rid of an employee you don’t want is to call attention to shortcomings that the previous manager never discussed or wasn’t concerned about.
For example, a salesperson might be hitting their quarterly sales target but they’re not doing a good enough job of updating their opportunity notes in their CRM software. The manager can put that employee on a performance plan. Any resistance or pushback from the employee only builds the manager’s case for them.
Performance plans rarely end well for an employee. Managers often set unrealistic KPIs because they don’t want you to succeed, they just want you gone.
I’ve been put on performance plans before and it’s very stressful. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, it would be to start looking for a new job immediately, before the plan runs out.
Firing vs. re-assigning to a new team
A former employer of mine handled underperforming employees in a way that benefited everyone. Instead of firing someone, the company tried to place this person in a more appropriate role that better fits their skill sets.
The on-boarding process for new employees includes so much product training and it would be a waste not to keep that knowledge at the company, if possible.
Perhaps a sales rep isn’t hitting their sales targets but they have a strong grasp of how the software platform works. The manager of the sales engineering or implementation team may want the opportunity to interview them for an open role.
I understand that I'm opening myself up to criticism here. I’ve never been a manager and I’ve been fired for poor performance – I’ll own it, I wasn’t doing well in that role.
But there is more to that story. After two months working with a new manager, I was put on a performance plan. I really enjoyed the technical side of the job and had worked closely with the implementation team. The leader of that team was very open to interviewing me to fill open headcount.
But my manager said I wasn’t allowed to waste time interviewing while on a plan – which we both knew I would fail. They could have freed up my slot for a new hire while I added value elsewhere. But this person had the power to control my future at the company, no matter the role, and utilized that power.
Creating a forum to defend ourselves
The current structure of at-will employment and corporate culture leaves no room for the employee to defend themselves. Managers have full authority to fire who they want. Their bosses listen to the manager, approve the performance plan, and tells the employee to work with the manager. End of conversation.
But what happens when your manager doesn’t want you to succeed? Where do you go? Certainly not HR. Their job is to mitigate risk to the business and unless you can prove discrimination (and sometimes even if you can prove it), they will defer to the most senior person in the situation, your manager.
Why aren’t employees allowed to tell their side of the story? A fair working environment must include a forum where a manager can say, “here are the reasons why this employee is doing a poor job,” and the employee can say, “here are the reasons why I think I’m doing a good job.”
Managers can sometimes be bullies (of course, they can also be wonderful advocates) and their reasons for getting rid of an employee aren’t inherently virtuous. It’s completely possible to lose a valuable employee because of mismanagement.
I want a forum in the workplace where managers and employees can discuss concerns, voice their sides of the story, and be given equal weight in any decisions. Terminations will still happen, but not before the due diligence needed to confirm the integrity of that decision.
Unequal power balance
At-will employment offers some benefits to workers, but nowhere near the same amount of benefits that employers see. Having the future of your career in the hands of one person is scary. I know that I wasn’t trash or deadweight –and no worker should be treated as such. We’re human workers that want a fair shot at keeping our jobs and succeeding in our careers.