Retention and Separation

Dawn Cooper

HRM/322

Susan Plotts

April 2, 2012

Retention and Separation

Retention pertains to ensuring that employees are active and productive within the organization. Separation occurs when an employee leaves on his or her own accord and is known as voluntary separation, or when an employee is asked to leave and is known as an involuntary separation. Either one requires a specific process. The issue here is to determine how to cope with a somewhat disgruntled employee named John. John is highly skilled and a hard working individual who has become disruptive to his teammates, among other things, and termination is inevitable.

The Issue

John has been working for the organization for two years, is highly skilled, and performs well. Although John has been recognized for his specific talents, he has developed some issues that must be addressed immediately. John is late for work every day, has become unmotivated, is disrespectful to coworkers and supervisors, and occasionally disappears for any length of time. These actions are affecting his teammates as well as the organization itself and can no longer be tolerated.

Up to this point, John has been an excellent employee with satisfactory to above-average performance reviews. However, John has become discontent with his environment. Recently John was approached by a supervisor named Bill about such issues as hiding in closets when he should be working. John became upset with Bill leaving Bill no option but to take the matter to HR for assistance with termination. Bill has taken every step to try to resolve the issue with John to no avail.

Retention Initiative

Retention initiative may be the best initiative for addressing the situation with John. People work for many reasons, but mostly for money. An employee should be proud of his or her job performance and should not feel degraded. Employees should treat each other with nothing less than the utmost respect and worth at all times. When employees feel good about themselves, morale is up and fellow employees and customers are treated with good attitudes and respect. This is when performance management comes into play, “having a performance management system in place, however, also allows the organization to systematically detect and treat performance problems that employee’s exhibit before those problems become so harmful and intractable that discharge is the only recourse” (Heneman & Judge, 2009, p. 703).

Progressive Discipline

When an employee is displaying behavioral issues, such as violating rules, procedures, and laws, it is time to refer to a progressive discipline system. This system would consist of supplying employees with notice of rules of conduct and misconduct, informing employees of consequences to his or her actions, providing fair and equal treatment to all employees, providing a full investigation of the issue and the employee’s defense, and providing the employees the opportunity to appeal the decisions (Heneman & Judge, 2009, p. 707).

The necessary actions to be taken would be first to give John a verbal warning, second a written warning, and third to either suspend or terminate. There are exceptions that could lead to automatic termination and would include: fighting, theft, drug or alcohol use, violence, threats, and insubordination. John is displaying acts of discontent and is making coworkers miserable. Therefore, the organization must be prepared for the necessity of conducting a termination.

Best Practices for Employee Termination

In John’s situation the best practices for employee separation would be a separation agreement. Separation agreements make the departure from the organization a smooth transition for both the employee and the employer. John has chosen to ignore the disciplinary policy. Therefore, a separation agreement is necessary. The agreement will include what the employee and employer are gaining as well as what each is giving up.

John’s separation agreement should be comprehensive and voluntary. John should not be forced to sign the agreement and should be given plenty of time to do so. John needs to comprehend completely what the agreement consists of before signing. Therefore, it would benefit the organization to have witnesses to the signing to verify that the agreement has been completely explained and read by John leaving no room for doubt of the understanding. This agreement will not help the organization with future claims, FSLA, and Workers Comp.

Conclusion

Even though John is highly skilled and typically an excellent worker, the organization has made a final decision to terminate his employment. No organization wants to terminate an employee, but sometimes an employee will just give up and become overwhelmed causing the employee to disregard organization policies and lose respect for coworkers and superiors. An organization will benefit from a performance management system, and a progressive discipline policy. Regarding the situation with John, it has been determined that a separation agreement would be in order, making the departure a smooth transition. The organization and the employee must understand that communication is the key to success.

Reference

Heneman, G.H. & Judge, A.T. (2009) Staffing organizations (6th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill