Be bold enough to fire an employee

One of the challenges as an Entrepreneur and business owner is when faced with making a decision whether to keep or fire a staff.

When I started the kopitiam, one of the managerial staff under our payroll was lacking in punctuality at work. He kept reporting late for work. But that was not the main problem. The problem was that since he was the managerial staff whose presence is needed to open accounts for the business day, all the other staff will have to wait for him before starting work. Hence, this created a hurdle to the business. A kopitiam business needs to open very early in the morning to catch a breakfast crowd. No point opening it at 8am - everybody's already in their respective office starting work proper.

Warning after warning and yet he kept repeating it. This was already setting a bad example to the other workers. As directors, we had to speak to him, essentially asking him to buck up. Or shall I say "My way or the highway".

To cut the story short, he didn't show any effort to improve and we promptly showed him the door.

Another story is about me firing a dialysis nurse. She did a few blunders. Number 1, when there were no scheduled patients to come for dialysis in the afternoon, she closed the dialysis centre and went home at around 2pm. It was clearly stated in her contract that she had to work till 5pm. Her second mistake was that she did not report to her superiors when a refridgerator was out of order and not cold enough, hence spoiling all the erythropoeitin injections and immunisation injections. Obviously this was a serious blunder and not forgiveable to a staff nurse. She too was shown the door.

As an entrepreneur and business owner, although one would like to be popular and kind, but one must be bold enough to fire an errant staff, especially when policies are breached. Leniency in such cases may be viewed as a weakness by other managerial staff. Of course, humans make errors. But some errors are not forgiveable and some should not be repeated.