I loved reading this article. I never looked at it this way.
I am a healer. I try to make everyone happy.
As I have grown up a bit I have come to realize that there are basically some folks that can’t be happy, they revel in their unhappiness.
This article posits that you need to just cut that cord, fire unhappy people and move on. That is an ingredient to make for happy institutions. I think I agree. I will send this writer a copy of my book “The Business of Happiness”. I bet it will be helpful for future articles.
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There is a follow-up article you should check out as well.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/more-on-happy-employees/
I worked for a software startup. For the first nine months I was getting excellent feedback from the manager who hired me. I was generally happy working there – I enjoyed the people I worked with and the job was going well. Then there was a shakeup in management (company was in financial trouble), and my manager was forced out of the company. The new manager had very high (perhaps unrealistic) standards and told us we were going to work “with our balls against the wall.” My assignments changed as well as my job responsibilities and I had to learn different work quickly. I also had a learning curve since this work was different that I was used to, and could not I perform at the same level as people who were junior to me (they were more familiar with this work and could do things faster than I could).
Was I unhappy? You bet. I was miserable. It affected my performance. I was frustrated that I couldn’t handle the pressure of one tight deadline after another. It’s not like I wasn’t used to working long hours before. While I would do anything for my old boss (even worked 70 hours one week for a critical deadline), I dreaded coming into work every day and began to hate my new boss. My attitude changed and I began looking around for another job. Apparently, my boss had the same idea. I saw a job ad from my employer on Monster.com that had the same job description as mine, but at time I didn’t realize he was looking to hiring someone to replace me. Three months passed and I got my performance review. It was far worse than I expected – I was shocked. I figured I’d open up and tell my boss that I was unhappy working there. Then two weeks later I was fired. The next day I heard my replacement started. I filed for my unemployment claim, and my former employer challenged it at a hearing. At the hearing my ex-boss wrote a written statement saying how I was not working up to “senior level” citing the lower number of bugs fixed compared to the junior programmers. Their argument didn’t stop me from getting unemployment benefits, but my period of unemployment was far longer than I expected. There was a recession going on, and I was out of work for nearly 10 months after I was fired. Employers looked at me as damaged goods because I had to tell the truth that I was fired from my job when asked at job interviews. The rejections just kept happening and I felt like quitting my profession and give up looking for work. The ex-manager never sees what the other side of being fired looks like. He never saw the depression I went through. If he just waited a little bit longer I would have found another job on my own and quit. It would have been easier that way. It’s easier to find another job when you already have a job.
The whole experience of being fired and having my ex-boss fight to keep me from getting unemployment benefits was traumatic. I was terrified of screwing up on my first job after 10 months of unemployment. It took several more successful jobs since then to regain my confidence and realize that I really don’t suck as a software engineer.
By the way the software startup where I was fired eventually went out of business.
I don’t know, I have an employee who used to be my co-worker, she can get very unhappy, and she always has. I have to keep a close eye on her, and reign her in when she gets out of control, or she takes everyone else down with her quickly. Upon inspection she always confesses she’s ‘letting things get to her’ and ‘knows not to act like that’. It takes a lot of time and effort and point blank babysitting on my part. Otherwise she is an exceptional worker, she just can not manage stress to save her life and if I don’t watch her, everyone pays for it. I am not going to fire her any time soon, but it’s a thought…
I work for the government and while I agree, we have some thoroughly miserable people and they’ll be gainfully employed until THEY decide they don’t want to be there any longer….
Healing clinical depression by handing out hefty awards/settlements due to lawsuits by fired employees who read this entry – while knowing the bad press backlash that would follow – as a healer’s key to happy/healthy businesses.
[dabbing eye with hanky]
My impression of the article mirrored the commenter who wondered what sort of marriage this guy has. Fire one employee and it’s a tough managerial decision, tout it as a policy and I see a very lazy and bad manager.