Dealing with Employee Dishonesty (and a Bright Red Firebird)

Sooner or later it’s going to happen – you’re going to have to fire someone for dishonesty.  Of course, all the management gurus will tell you that you need to trust your people absolutely, and because you’ve heeded this advice, you’ll feel betrayed and stupid.

On the opposite side of the trust spectrum, I was once told a manager must assume that every one of his people is trying to rip him off at all times.  In this case, when you do have to deal with dishonesty, it’s not a shock or a surprise, but you live the rest of your work life in a perpetual state of jaded negativity.

Both mindsets are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Organizations’ inability to manage this dynamic is why employee orientations often suck so badly.  There’s really nothing more welcoming in an organization, than when they spend an hour or so reviewing all the possible contingencies under which you will be fired.  You can bet the HR and legal teams worked overtime on this stuff.

But I’ll bet you Jim Rockford’s bright red Firebird (if you were born after 1975, look it up) there’s a way for managers to negotiate this grey area.

You absolutely need to trust your people – much like you trust your children.  You must also open your mind to the possibility that some employees are going to betray this trust every now and again – much like your children.

However, the parallel with children ends here.  In most cases, you’re stuck with your kids, and all their mistakes.  You have no such obligation with employees.  If an employee breaches your trust by acting dishonestly, you have a responsibility to act quickly, decisively, and severely.

There are very few circumstances of employee dishonesty that I can think of that should not end in the termination of an employment contract.  Failure to do so treats shareholders, and all the honest employees you have with great disrespect.

And don’t try to weasel out of this managerial burden by having the HR and Legal teams get together to put 400 pages of policy in place.  You can’t legislate honesty… but you can fire the dishonest.  Quickly.

I was unable to embed the video clip I wanted this week, so go look it up on YouTube yourself:  “SNL Sexual Harassment and You”