The Practitioner: Sharpening the axe
Sometimes a change is as good as a holiday. Though in our case a change of personnel across the three offices is as good as a redundancy. Well maybe not as good as redundancy, but it certainly postpones one!
SOMETIMES a change is as good as a holiday. Though in our case a change of personnel across the three offices is as good as a redundancy. Well maybe not as good as redundancy, but it certainly postpones one!
If we are being honest then we are probably avoiding the inevitable, but at least by moving these particular staff around we are giving them one last chance to perform before we have to sit down and make that difficult decision.
The difficult decision we are putting off is getting rid of a couple of underperformers. One of them has been with us longer than most of the furniture so as well as it being a difficult decision it will probably be an expensive one too if we don’t do it correctly.
The other member of staff we have moved from one office to another is beginning to get too big for his boots and is starting to become a bit of a loose cannon. I sometimes feel as if he has another agenda up his sleeve – such as trying to build up his own portfolio and then try to pinch the clients at some point in the not so distant future.
However, it’s probably me just being paranoi. We just get the impression recently that the word “team” is not in his vocabulary and that is probably the root of all the other issues we seem to be having with him.
I’m not sure what end result I want to get out of this change around to be honest, if the staff members involved don’t get the message then I think I quite fancy wielding the axe!
We would need to consider how this would be received by the remaining staff, would it make everyone pull up their socks or would it demotivate them. Only time will tell I suppose. Meanwhile, besides having to deal with the internal staff issues, a particular client is causing me a lot of stress too.
We recently signed them up for a monthly retainer fee in return for delivery of agreed projects over the next few months. Now that the monthly retainer is coming in and the monthly projects are being delivered they seem to be getting more and more demanding. They are probably only making sure that they get what they deserve for their money but sometimes it feels like they are getting too much. The same can’t be said about the firm and our under performing staff members.