1. Human Resource Management
Fifteenth Edition
Chapter 10
Managing Careers
and Retention
Where are We Now … Chapter 10 Managing Careers and Retention
Having invested time and resources in selecting, training, and appraising employees, the employer of course wants its employees to want to stay with the firm. The main purpose of this chapter is to explain how to support your employees’ career development needs and improve employee retention.
The main topics we’ll address are career management, improving employee engagement through career management, managing employee turnover and retention, employee life-cycle management, and managing dismissals.
Copyright © 2017, 2015, 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2. Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
10-1. Discuss what employers and supervisors can do to support employees’ career development needs Explain why career development can improve employee engagement.
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
10-1. Describe what employers and supervisors can do to support employees’ career development needs.
10-2. Explain why career development can improve employee engagement.
10-3. Describe a comprehensive approach to retaining employees.

3. Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
10-3. Describe a comprehensive approach to retaining employees List and briefly explain the main decisions employers should address in reaching promotion and other employee life-cycle career decisions Explain each of the main grounds for dismissal.
After studying this chapter, you will also be able to:
10-4. List and briefly explain the main decisions employers should address in reaching promotion and other employee life-cycle career decisions.
10-5. Explain each of the main grounds for dismissal.

4. I. Describe what employers and supervisors can do to support employees career development needs.
Let’s start with examining what employers and supervisors can do to support employees’ career and development needs.

5. Career Management Career Career Management Career Development
Career Planning
After appraising performance, it’s often necessary to address career-related issues and to discuss these issues with subordinates. A basic assumption underlying the second role is that the employer has an obligation to utilize its employees’ abilities to the fullest and to give all employees a chance to grow and to develop successful careers. Employers do this not just because they think that it’s the right thing to do, but because by doing so both gain—the employee by having a more fulfilling career, and the employer by reaping the benefits of improved employee relations, engagement, and retention.
Let’s define some important terms:
We may define career as the occupational positions a person holds over the years.
Career management is the process for enabling employees to better understand and develop their career skills and interests and to use these skills and interests most effectively both within the company and after they leave the firm.
Career development is the lifelong series of activities (such as workshops) that contribute to a person’s career exploration, establishment, success, and fulfillment.
Career planning is the deliberate process through which someone becomes aware of personal skills, interests, knowledge, motivations, and other characteristics; acquires information about opportunities and choices; identifies career-related goals; and establishes action plans to attain specific goals.

6. Careers Today
People once viewed careers as a sort of upward stairway from job to job, more often than not with one or at most a few firms. Today, many people do still move up, but many (or most) find themselves having to reinvent themselves.
Careers today differ in other ways from a few years ago. With many more women pursuing professional and managerial careers, families must balance the challenges associated with dual career pressures. At the same time, what people want from their careers is changing. Baby boomers—those retiring in the next few years—tended to be job- and employer-focused. People entering the job market now often value more opportunities for balanced work–family lives.

7. The Psychological Contract
One implication is that what employers and employees expect from each other is changing. What the employer and employee expect of each other is part of what psychologists call a psychological contract. This is “an unwritten agreement that exists between employers and employees. "The psychological contract identifies each party’s mutual expectations.

8. Employee’s Role in Career Management
We will see that the employee, the manager, and the employer all have roles in the employee’s career development.
Let’s take a look at the employee’s role in career management.
It is the employee who must shoulder responsibility for his or her own career; assess interests, skills, and values; seek out career information resources; and generally take those steps that must be taken to ensure a happy and fulfilling career. For the employee, career planning means matching individual strengths and weaknesses with occupational opportunities and threats. In other words, the person wants to pursue occupations, jobs, and a career that capitalize on his or her interests, aptitudes, values, and skills.

9. Employer’s Role in Career Management
The person’s manager and employer have career management responsibilities.
For example, before hiring, realistic job interviews can help prospective employees more accurately gauge whether the job is a good fit for them. Periodic job rotation can help the person develop a more realistic picture of what he or she is good at, and thus the career moves that might be best. Finally, we will see that once the person has been on the job for a while, career oriented appraisals are important. Here the manager not only appraises the employee but helps the person to match his or her strengths and weaknesses with a feasible career path.

10. Employer’s Career Management Methods
Training
Planning Workshops
Career Coaches
It pays to help employees improve their careers. Some of the methods that employer’s utilize are:
Career Development Training – Some employers create Web-based or offline libraries of career development materials, for employees to utilize.
A career planning workshop – Is “a planned learning event in which participants are expected to be actively involved, completing career planning exercises and inventories and participating in career skills practice sessions.
Career coaches – Generally help employees create 1- to 5-year plans showing where their careers with the firm may lead. The coaches help individual employees identify their development needs and obtain the training, professional development, and networking opportunities they require to satisfy those needs.

11. Integrated Software Let’s take a look…
Improving Performance Through HRIS: Integrating Talent Management and Career Succession Planning
Integrated Software Let’s take a look…
Improving Performance Through HRIS: Integrating Talent Management and Career and Succession Planning
Consistent with best talent management practice, the employer should endeavor to integrate its career planning with its other HR activities efforts. As one example, an employee’s career planning and development plans should reflect his or her performance appraisal ratings and training plans. Similarly, as explained in Chapter 5 (pages ), succession plans should reflect employees’ career interests.
Integrated talent management software helps to achieve such coordination. For example, the company that manages the trans-Alaska pipeline has an online portal that lets employees “see their full training history, development plans and upcoming deadlines, register for courses, or do career planning—usually without having to ask for help.” At the same time, “managers can get a quick picture of the training needs for a particular group, or see all the employees who have a specific qualification.” Similarly, Halogen eSuccession enables the employer to “identify the skills and competencies required to support your 3-5 year strategic plans and cultivate these in your high–potential employees with career and development planning….”

12. Diversity Counts Toward Career Success
People with disabilities tend to have less career success than do those without disabilities. Some barriers may be self-imposed. For instance, some with disabilities may have lower career expectations, or may not proactively seek work-related help or the accommodations they are due under EEO law. However, most such problems reflect unfortunate assumptions and actions by managers and coworkers. Though well meaning, they may view those with disabilities as unable to perform various jobs, negatively evaluate them as being poor occupational fits, and assume that jobs designed for those without disabilities are inappropriate for those with disabilities. Figure 10-2 presents some positive strategies for people with disabilities.
Let’s look at Figure 10-2.

13. Diversity Counts (1 of 2)
Figure 10-2 Career Guideline Suggestions for Those with Disabilities
Strategy
Key Import of Strategy
Espousing a positive mind-set and demonstrating extreme
persistence
Overcome worries and tocus on
tasks at hand
Sensitizing people to ability over disability:
Signaling ability by learning new skills
Signaling ability by helping coworkers through newly gained skills
Signaling ability by trying to enhance performance through feedback seeking
Trounce stereotypes regarding
competence
Figure 10-2: Career Guideline Suggestions for Those with Disabilities

14. Diversity Counts (2 of 2) Strategy Key Import of Strategy
Engaging in disability advocacy:
Awareness building
Influencing organizational policymaking with regard to accommodation
Sensitize others to performance
potential of all PWD and help all PWD
perform
Building, leveraging, and contributing to relevant networks:
Forming networks comprising PWD
Seeking mentors who have a disability
Serving as role models or mentors to other PWD
Aid general adjustment and career
growth of self and other PWD
Source: “Career Management Strategies of People With Disabilities,” Human Resource Management, may - June 2014, volume 53, number three, page Reprinted by permission from John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Cleared via Copyright Clearance Center

15. The Manager as Mentor and Coach
Do not underestimate the impact that a supervisor can have on his or her employee’s career development. With little or no additional effort than realistic performance reviews and candid career advice, a competent supervisor can help the employee get and stay on the right career track.

16. Coaching and Mentoring
Set High Standards
Invest The Time
Actively Steer Protégés
Requires Trust
Professional Competence
Consistency
Ability to Communicate
Share Control
Let look more into Coaching and Mentoring:
Mentoring means having experienced senior people advising, counseling, and guiding employees’ longer-term career development. Mentoring may be formal or informal. Informally, mid- and senior-level managers may voluntarily help less-experienced employees—for instance, by giving them career advice and helping them to navigate office politics. Many employers also have formal mentoring programs.
Coaching focuses on teaching daily tasks that you can easily relearn, so coaching’s downside is usually limited.
Mentoring focuses on relatively hard-to-reverse longer-term career issues, and often touches on the person’s psychology (motives, and how one gets along with others, for instance).
Research on what supervisors can do to be better mentors reveals few surprises. Effective mentors do the following:
Set high standards, are willing to invest the time and effort the mentoring relationship requires, and actively steer protégés into important projects, teams, and jobs. Effective mentoring requires trust, and the level of trust reflects the mentor’s professional competence, consistency, ability to communicate, and readiness to share control.

17. Improving Performance: The Strategic Context
Cognizant Corporation Let’s talk about it…
Improving Performance: The Strategic Context
Strategic human resource management means formulating HR policies and practices that produce the employee skills and behaviors the company needs to achieve its strategic aims. Cognizant Corporation requires its managers to enumerate the talent implications of each aspect of their strategic plans. Because of this, it’s no surprise that Cognizant has a well-thought-out career and talent development process. Each of Cognizant’s 170,000 employees has his or her own development plan. Cognizant’s Career Architecture Program enables employees to think through and choose Cognizant career tracks best suited to their capabilities and to the company’s needs. Its Cognizant Academy provides training that serves both the company’s needs today, as well as its projected longer-term talent and development needs. Cognizant’s HR strategy has helped keep Cognizant a leader in its field, in part by ensuring that its employees get the career direction and development they need to be motivated to create the company’s great products.
Talk About it (Discussion): What engineering and sales benefits would a company like Cognizant derive from taking the time to work out a career development plan for each of its employees?

18. II. Explain why career development can improve employee engagement.
Engagement refers to being psychologically involved in, connected to, and committed to getting one’s job done.
Let’s look into engagement element and how career development can improve it.

19. Employee Engagement Guide for Managers
Career Management
Commitment-Oriented Career Development Efforts
Labor market turbulence has understandably prompted many people to ask why they should be loyal to their employers.
Employers today therefore have to think through how they’re going to maintain employee engagement, and thereby minimize voluntary departures, and maximize employee effort. (the Cognizant Corporation – strategic context we just covered is one example.)
Career management is the process for enabling employees to better understand and develop their career skills and interests and to use these skills and interests most effectively both within the company and after they leave the firm.
Commitment-Oriented Career Development Efforts – Given the importance to most people of having a fulfilling and successful career, career planning and development can play an important role in engagement. Managed effectively, the employer’s career development process should send the signal that the employer cares about the employee’s career success.

20. Improving Performance: HR Practices around the Globe
Career Development at Medtronic Let’s talk about it…
Improving Performance: HR Practices around the Globe
Career Development at Medtronic
Medtronic is a global medical technology company with more than 85,000 employees around the world. The company offers a wide range of career planning and development support tools aimed at helping employees understand their occupational strengths and weaknesses and reach their potential. These tools include customized development plans, self-assessment and feedback tools, mentoring programs, comprehensive on-site classes covering business, engineering, and science topics, tuition reimbursement scholarships, and online job listings so the employee can seek out new career opportunities within the company.
In addition, new MBA employees can participate in Medtronic’s corporate Leadership Development Rotation Program. This is a 2- to 3-year program. It includes 12- to 18-month assignments in two different geographic locations, thus providing participants with both a broad understanding of Medtronics and in-depth functional experiences. Functional tracks include clinical, corporate development, finance, human resources, information technology, marketing/business development, operations, and regulatory.
In addition to their job assignments, participants engage in other developmental experiences including peer mentoring programs, functional training, and leadership workshops. Among other things, candidates for this program are required to have 3 to 5 years of professional and relevant work experience and an MBA (or other masters-level degree as appropriate) and to be mobile and willing to pursue opportunities in various geographic locations.
Talk About it (Discussion): Look more closely at this program (go to then click “Careers” and “Career Growth”) or a similar program and discuss why it should positively affect employee engagement?
Source: Based on accessed March 12, 2013;
medtronic.com/us-en/about-3/medtronic-plc facts.html?cmpid=mdt_plc_2015_US_about_3_story_panel_featured_
company_facts_cta_text_link_learn_more.

21. III. Describe a comprehensive approach to retaining employees.
Next we will examine a comprehensive approach to retaining employees.

22. Managing Employee Turnover and Retention
Not all employees’ careers plans will coincide with the company’s needs.
Turnover—defined as the rate at which employees leave the firm—varies markedly among industries.

23. Improving Performance: HR as a Profit Center
Turnover and Performance Let’s talk about it…
Improving Performance: HR as a Profit Center
Turnover and Performance
What is the link between turnover and organizational performance? Perhaps surprisingly, the issue isn’t clear (although it would seem obvious that firing an incompetent employee would be a positive). The problem is that what might be a positive in individual cases becomes a negative when the employer repeatedly loses employees. One study concludes that all turnover, voluntary or involuntary, is associated with reduced organizational performance. The researchers say, “Organizations must recognize that when turnover rates rise, their workforce and financial performances are at risk. They should search for strategies to mitigate and eliminate turnover, recognizing that lower turnover [of all types] is always better.”
One study analyzed the tangible and intangible costs of turnover in a call center with 31 agents and 4 supervisors. Tangible costs associated with an agent’s leaving included the costs of recruiting, screening, interviewing, and testing applicants, as well as the cost of wages while the new agent was oriented and trained. Intangible costs included the cost of lost productivity for the new agent (who is less productive at first), the cost of rework for the new agent’s errors, and the supervisory cost for coaching the new agent.
The researchers’ calculations estimated the cost of an agent leaving at about $21,551. This call center averaged 18.6 vacancies per year (about a 60% turnover rate). Therefore, the researchers estimated the total annual cost of agent turnover at $400,853. Taking steps to cut this turnover rate in, say, half could save this firm about $200,000 per year. How to cut turnover? Another study focused on turnover intentions among government technology workers. It concluded that human resource managers could influence turnover through practices such as promotion opportunities, training and development, pay and reward satisfaction, and family-friendly policies. The bottom line is that HR practices can have a big influence on employee turnover, and thereby on the company’s profitability.
Talk About it (Discussion): Discuss three steps you would take to reduce the need to dismiss employees.

24. Managing Voluntary Turnover
In reducing turnover, the logical place to start is by measuring the number of employees (particularly top performers and high potentials) who leave the company.
However, identifying why employees voluntarily leave is not so easy. People who are dissatisfied with their jobs are more likely to leave, but the sources of dissatisfaction are many and varied.
In one survey, the consultants collected data from 262 U.S. organizations having a minimum of 1,000 employees. In this survey, the five top reasons that high-commitment/top-performing employees gave for leaving (ranked from high to low) were: pay, promotional opportunities, work–life balance, career development, and health-care benefits
Other reasons employees voluntarily leave include: unfairness, not having their voices heard, and a lack of recognition.

25. A Comprehensive Approach to Retaining Employees
Exit Interviews
Attitude Surveys
Open door / Hotlines
Stay Interviews
Identifying the problems with retention is an important first step. Here are some possible ways to do this:
Effectively conducted exit interviews provide useful insights into turnover problem areas.
Many employers routinely administer attitude surveys to monitor employees about matters such as supervision and pay.
Open-door policies and anonymous “ hotlines” help management identify and remedy morale problems.
Usually conducted by the employee’s manager, the aim of a stay interview is to head off retention problems by finding out “how the employee is doing.”

26. Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
Employee Retention
Let’s take a look…
Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
Digital and social media tools can vastly improve the employee engagement/retention process. Software company SAS’s employee-retention program sifts through employee data on traits like skills, tenure, performance, education, and friendships. It can predict which high-value employees are more likely to quit in the near future (allowing SAS to try to head that off). Alliant Techsystems created a “flight risk model” to calculate the probability an employee would leave and to take corrective action. Based on its analysis of previous survey results, Google’s “Googlegeist” survey contains five questions aimed at identifying Googlers who are more likely to leave; if a team’s responses fall below 70% favorable, Google knows to take corrective action. Analytical software from Evolv (now Cornerstone, takes HR data analysis deeper than most. It can crunch more than 500 million data points on a vast array of items ranging from unemployment rates to a person’s social media usage to help clients like Xerox improve retention. For example, Evolv discovered that employees with two social media accounts perform much better than those with more or less, and that in call-center work, employees with criminal backgrounds perform better than those never arrested. Web sites such as Globoforce ( enable each employee’s colleagues to comment on and to recognize and reward the person’s contributions. Vendors assert this leads to “dramatic improvements in employee engagement, retention and measurable adoption of corporate culture.” Social media also enables an otherwise muted layoff to go viral. When UBS bank dismissed 10,000 employees recently, former employees quickly took to Twitter. Some claimed they discovered they were fired when they arrived to work and found their passes deactivated.

27. Job Withdrawal
Unfortunately, voluntary turnover is just one way that employees withdraw. Withdrawal in general means separating oneself from one’s current situation—it’s a means of escape for someone who is dissatisfied or fearful.
Absences and voluntary turnover are two obvious types of job withdrawal. Others can be less obvious, if no less corrosive. Some examples include “taking undeserved work breaks, spending time in idle conversation, and neglecting aspects of the job one is obligated to perform.” Other employees stop “showing up” mentally (“psychological withdrawal”), perhaps daydreaming at their desks while productivity suffers. The employee is there, but mentally absent.

28. IV. List and briefly explain the main decisions employers should address in reaching promotion and other employee life-cycle career decisions.
Now we will discuss main decisions employers should address in reaching promotion and other employee life-cycle career decisions.

29. Employee Life-Cycle Career Management
An employee’s tenure with a firm tends to follow a life cycle, from employment interview to first job, promotion, transfer, and perhaps retirement. We’ll look here at the latter three:
Making Promotion Decision, Managing Transfers, and Retirement.

30. Making Promotion Decisions
Is seniority or competence the rule?
How should we measure competence?
Is the process formal or informal?
Vertical, horizontal, or other?
Promotions traditionally refer to advancements to positions of increased responsibility. Most people crave promotions, which usually mean more pay, responsibility, and (often) job satisfaction. For employers, promotions can provide opportunities to reward exceptional performance, and to fill open positions with tested and loyal employees. Yet the promotion process isn’t always a positive experience. Unfairness or secrecy can devalue the process.
There are several decisions that become a part of the promotion process:
Decision 1: Is Seniority or Competence the Rule? In setting promotion policies, one decision is whether to base promotion on seniority or competence, or some combination of the two.
Decision 2: How Should We Measure Competence? If the firm opts for competence, it must define and measure competence. Defining and measuring past performance is relatively straightforward. But promotions should rest on procedures for predicting the candidate’s future performance.
Decision 3: Is the Process Formal or Informal? Many firms have informal promotion processes. They may or may not post open positions, and key managers may use their own unpublished promotion criteria. Here employees (and courts) may conclude that factors like “who you know” are more important than performance, and that working hard to get ahead—at least in this firm—is futile. Other employers set formal, published promotion policies and procedures. Employees receive a formal promotion policy describing the criteria by which the firm awards promotions. A job posting policy states the firm will post open positions and their requirements, and circulate these to all employees.
Decision 4: Vertical, Horizontal, or Other? Promotions aren’t necessarily upward. Thus some employees, such as engineers, may have little or no interest in promotion to managerial roles. Several options are available. Some firms, such as the exploration division of British Petroleum (BP), create two parallel career paths, one for managers and another for “individual contributors” such as high-performing engineers. Another option is to move the person horizontally. For instance, a production employee may move to human resources to develop his or her skills and to test and challenge his or her aptitudes. In a sense, “promotions” are possible even when leaving the person in the same job.

31. Know Your Employment Law (1 of 2)
Establish Clear Guidelines for Managing Promotions Let’s take a look…
Know Your Employment Law
Establish Clear Guidelines for Managing Promotions
In general, the employer’s promotion processes must comply with all the same antidiscrimination laws as do procedures for recruiting and selecting employees or any other HR actions. For example, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act covers any “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.” Similarly, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 made it unlawful to discriminate against older employees or applicants for employment in any manner, including promotion.
The employer should establish safeguards to ensure that the promotion decision doesn’t prompt a discrimination claim, or a claim of retaliation, as it often does. For example, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a woman’s claim of retaliation to proceed when she showed that she was turned down for promotion because a supervisor she had previously accused of sexual harassment persuaded her current supervisor not to promote her.
One way to defend against such claims is to make sure promotion procedures are clear and objective. For example, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a company’s failure to set objective guidelines and procedures for promoting current employees may suggest employment discrimination. (In this case, the court found that the organization, a community college, did not consistently use the same procedures for hiring and promotions, and did not clarify when and under what conditions vacant positions were announced, or whether there were application deadlines.) In another case, the employer turned down the 61-year-old employee for a promotion because the person who interviewed him said he did not “get a real feeling of confidence” from the candidate. In this case, “the court made it clear that while subjective reasons can justify adverse employment decisions, an employer must articulate any clear and reasonably specific factual bases upon which it based its decision.” In other words, have objective evidence supporting your subjective assessment for promotion.

32. Diversity Counts The Gender Gap
Women still don’t reach the top of the career ladder in numbers proportionate to their numbers in U.S. industry. Women constitute more than 40% of the workforce, but hold less than 2% of top management positions. Blatant or subtle discrimination may account for much of this. In one study, promoted women had to receive higher performance ratings
than promoted men to get promoted, “suggesting that women were held to stricter standards for promotion.” Women report greater barriers (such as being excluded from informal networks) than do men, and more difficulty getting developmental assignments. Women have to be more proactive than men to get such assignments.

33. Steps To Eliminate the Barriers for Women
Eliminate Barriers
Improve Networking and Mentoring
Break The Glass Ceiling
Adopt Flexible Career Tracks
Employers need to eliminate the barriers that impede women’s career progress.
Some specific steps include the following:
Eliminate Barriers. Many practices (such as required late-night meetings) may seem gender neutral but in fact disproportionately affect women.
Improve Networking and Mentoring. To improve female employees’ networking opportunities, Marriott International instituted a series of leadership conferences for women. Speakers offered practical tips for career advancement, and shared their experiences. More important, the conferences provided informal opportunities—over lunch, for instance—for the Marriott women to meet and forge business relationships.
Break the Glass Ceiling. As one expert puts it, “The roots of gender discrimination are built into a platform of work practices, cultural norms, and images that appear unbiased…People don’t even notice them, let alone question them.” These range from late meetings to golf course memberships.
Adopt Flexible Career Tracks. Inflexible promotional ladders (such as “You must work 8 years of 50-hour weeks to apply for partner”) can put women—who often have more responsibility for child-raising chores—at a disadvantage. One solution is to institute career tracks (including reduced hours and more flexible year-round work schedules) that enable women to periodically reduce their time at work, but remain on a partner track. For example, when the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche noticed it was losing female auditors, it instituted a new flexible/reduced work schedule. This enabled many working mothers who might otherwise have left to stay with the firm.

34. Managing Transfers
A transfer is a move from one job to another, usually with no change in salary or grade. Employers may transfer a worker to vacate a position where he or she is no longer needed, to fill one where he or she is needed, or more generally to find a better fit for the employee within the firm.
Many firms today boost productivity by consolidating positions. Transfers are a way to give displaced employees a chance for another assignment or, perhaps, some personal growth.
Employees seek transfers for many reasons, including personal enrichment, more interesting jobs, greater convenience—better hours, location of work, and so on—or to jobs offering greater advancement possibilities. Transfers for the firm’s convenience—once widely used—are used less of late.

35. Managing Retirement
“Retirement planning” is no longer just about helping current employees slip into retirement. It should also help the employer to retain, in some capacity, the skills and brainpower of those who would normally retire and leave the firm.
Retirement planning is a significant issue for employers. In the United States, the number of 25- to 34-year-olds is growing relatively slowly, and the number of 35- to 44-year-olds is declining. So, with many employees in their 60s approaching retirement age, employers face a problem: “Companies have been so focused on downsizing to contain costs that they largely neglected a looming threat to their competitiveness … a severe shortage of talented workers.”
Many have wisely chosen to fill their staffing gaps in part with current or soon-to-be retirees.
Other techniques employers use to keep older workers include offering them part-time positions, hiring them as consultants or temporary workers, offering them flexible work arrangements, encouraging them to work past traditional retirement age, providing training to upgrade skills, and instituting a phased retirement program. The latter lets senior workers ease into retirement with gradually reduced work schedules.

36. V. Explain each of the main grounds for dismissal.
Next we will examine each of the main grounds for dismissal.

37. Managing Dismissals
Not all employee separations are voluntary. Some career plans and appraisals end not in promotion or graceful retirement but in dismissal—involuntary termination of an employee’s employment with the firm.
Many dismissals are avoidable. For example, many dismissals flow from bad hiring decisions. Using assessment tests, background checks, drug testing, and clearly defined jobs can reduce such dismissals.
There are four bases for dismissal: unsatisfactory performance, misconduct, lack of qualifications for the job, and changed requirements of (or elimination of) the job.
Unsatisfactory performance refers to a persistent failure to perform assigned duties or to meet prescribed standards on the job. Specific reasons include excessive absenteeism, tardiness, a persistent failure to meet normal job requirements, or an adverse attitude.
Misconduct is deliberate and willful violation of the employer’s rules and may include stealing and rowdy behavior.
Lack of qualifications for the job is an employee’s inability to do the assigned work, although he or she is diligent. Because this employee may be trying to do the job, it is reasonable to try to salvage him or her—perhaps by assigning the employee to another job.
Changed requirements of the job is an employee’s incapability of doing the job after the nature of the job has changed. Similarly, you may have to dismiss an employee when his or her job is eliminated. Again, the employee may be industrious, so it is reasonable to retrain or transfer this person, if possible.
Insubordination, a form of misconduct, is sometimes the grounds for dismissal. The two basic
categories of insubordination are unwillingness to carry out the manager’s orders, and disrespectful
behavior toward the manager.
To avoid suits: First allow the employee to explain why he (or she) did what he did.
Second, have a formal multistep procedure (including warning) and an appeal process.
Third, the person who actually does the dismissing is important. Fourth, dismissed employees
who feel they’ve been treated unfairly financially are more likely to sue.
Wrongful discharge (or termination) occurs when an employee’s dismissal does not comply with
the law or with the contractual arrangement stated or implied by the employer.
To avoid liability: First, have employment policies including grievance procedures that help show
you treat employees fairly. Second, review and refine all employment-related policies, procedures,
and documents to limit challenges. Follow outlines procedural steps and ask the questions in
Figure 10-6.
Have a security checklist to collect all keys, laptops and also security measure need to include disabling
passwords.
To avoid having personal liability become an issue.
● Follow company policies and procedures. An employee may initiate a claim against a
Supervisor who he or she alleges did not follow policies and procedures.
● Administer the dismissal in a manner that does not add to the employee’s emotional hardship
(as would having the employee publicly collect his or her belongings and leave the office).
● Do not act in anger, since doing so undermines the appearance of objectivity.
● Finally, utilize the HR department for advice regarding how to handle difficult dismissal
situations.

38. Grounds for Dismissal Unsatisfactory Performance Misconduct
Lack of Qualifications for the Job
Changed Requirements of the Job
Insubordination
There are four bases for dismissal – unsatisfactory performance, misconduct, lack of qualifications for the job, and changed requirements of (or elimination of) the job.
1. Unsatisfactory performance – refers to a persistent failure to perform assigned duties or to meet prescribed standards on the job. Specific reasons include excessive absenteeism, tardiness, a persistent failure to meet normal job requirements, or an adverse attitude.
2. Misconduct – is deliberate and willful violation of the employer’s rules and may include stealing and rowdy behavior.
3. Lack of qualifications for the job – is an employee’s inability to do the assigned work, although he or she is diligent. Because this employee may be trying to do the job, it is reasonable to try to salvage him or her—perhaps through further training or by assigning the employee to another job.
4. Changed requirements of the job – is an employee’s incapability of doing the job after the nature of the job has changed. Similarly, you may have to dismiss an employee when his or her job is eliminated. Again, the employee may be industrious, so it is reasonable to retrain or transfer this person, if possible.
5. Insubordination, a form of misconduct, is sometimes the grounds for dismissal. The two basic categories of insubordination are unwillingness to carry out the manager’s orders, and disrespectful behavior toward the manager.

39. Fairness Safeguards Allow a Full Explanation
Multistep procedure / Appeal process
Person who does the dismissal
Severance Pay
Dismissals are never easy. However, the manager can take steps to make them fair.
First, allow the employee to explain why he (or she) did what he did. It could turn out, for instance, that the employee “disobeyed” the order because he or she did not understand it. Similarly, people who get full explanations of why and how termination decisions were made “were more likely to perceive their layoff as fair … and indicate that they did not wish to take the past employer to court.”
Second, have a formal multistep procedure (including warning) and an appeal process.
Third, the person who actually does the dismissing is important. Receiving it from an immediate manager vs. Human Resources Manager.
Fourth, dismissed employees who feel they’ve been treated unfairly financially are more likely to sue. Many employers use severance pay to blunt a dismissal’s sting.
Figure 10-3 summarizes typical severance policies.

40. Severance Calculation Method Median weeks of severance
Severance Policies
Figure 10-3 Median Weeks of Severance Pay by Job Level
Severance Calculation Method
Median weeks of severance
for Executives
for Managers
for Professionals
Fixed 26 6 4
Variable Amount by employment Tenure
blank
1 year 2
3 years 7 5
5 years 10
10 years 20 12
15 years 16 15
Maximum 39 24
Source: “Median Weeks of Severance Pay by Job Level”, in “Severance Pay: Current Trends and Practices,” from Culpepper Compensation Surveys & Services website, July Copyright © Culpepper and Associates, Inc., © 2012.

41. Know Your Employment Law (2 of 2)
Termination at Will
Let’s take a look…
Know Your Employment Law
Termination at Will
For more than 100 years, the prevailing rule in the United States has been that without an employment contract, either the employer or the employee can terminate at will the employment relationship. In other words, the employee could resign for any reason, at will, and the employer could similarly dismiss an employee for any reason, at will. Today, however, dismissed employees increasingly take their cases to court, and employers are finding that they no longer have a blanket right to fire.
Three main protections against wrongful discharge eroded the termination-at- will doctrine—statutory exceptions, common law exceptions, and public policy exceptions.
First, statutory exceptions include federal and state equal employment and workplace laws that prohibit certain dismissals. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discharging employees based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Laws protecting LGBT workers from termination for sexual orientation have been passed in 18 states and the District of Colombia, but in 29 states someone can still be terminated based on sexual orientation. For federal employees, the EEOC has held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to LGBT individuals.
Second, numerous common law exceptions exist. Courts create these exceptions based on precedents. For example, courts have held that employee handbooks promising termination only “for just cause” may create an exception to the at-will rule.
Finally, under the public policy exception, courts have held a discharge to be wrongful when it was against a well-established public policy. Thus, a public policy exception might prohibit an employer from firing an employee for refusing to break the law.

42. Avoiding Wrongful Discharge Suits
Wrongful Discharge – (or termination) occurs when an employee’s dismissal does not comply with the law or with the contractual arrangement stated or implied by the employer.
Wrongful discharge (or termination) occurs when an employee’s dismissal does not comply with the law or with the contractual arrangement stated or implied by the employer.
Avoiding wrongful discharge suits requires several things:
First, have employment policies including grievance procedures that help show you treat employees fairly. Here employers can also use severance pay to blunt a dismissal’s sting. No termination is pleasant, but the first line of defense is to handle it justly.
Second, review and refine all employment-related policies, procedures, and documents to limit challenges.

43. Security Measures & Supervisor Liability
Prudence suggests using a checklist to ensure (for instance) that dismissed employees return all keys and company property, and (often) accompanying them out of the building. The employer should disable Internet-related passwords and accounts of former employees, plug holes that could allow an ex-employee to gain illegal online access, and have rules for return of company laptops and handhelds.
Supervisor Liability
Courts may hold managers personally liable for their supervisory actions, including dismissals. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act defines employer to include “any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to any employee.” This can mean the individual supervisor.

44. The Exit Process and Termination Interview (1 of 2)
Plan the interview carefully
Get to the point
Describe the situation
Listen
Review the severance package
Identify the next step
Dismissing an employee is one of the most difficult tasks you can face at work. The dismissed employee, even if warned many times in the past, may still react with disbelief or even violence. Guidelines for the termination interview itself are as follows:
1. Plan the interview carefully. According to experts at Hay Associates, this includes:
● Make sure the employee keeps the appointment time.
● Never inform an employee over the phone.
● Allow 10 minutes as sufficient time for the interview.
● Use a neutral site, not your own office.
● Have employee agreements, the human resource file, and a release announcement prepared in advance.
● Be available at a time after the interview in case questions or problems arise.
● Have phone numbers ready for medical or security emergencies.
2. Get to the point. When the employee enters the office, give the person a moment to get comfortable and then inform him or her of your decision.
3. Describe the situation. Briefly, in three or four sentences, explain why the person is being let go. For instance, “Production in your area is down 4%, and we are continuing to have quality problems. We have talked about these problems several times in the past 3 months, and the solutions are not being followed through on. We have to make a change.” Don’t personalize the situation as in, “Your production is just not up to par.” Emphasize the decision is irrevocable. Preserving the employee’s dignity is crucial.
4. Listen. Continue the interview until the person appears to be talking freely and reasonably calmly.
5. Review the severance package. Describe severance payments, benefits, access to office support people, and the way references will be handled. However, under no conditions, make any promises of benefits beyond those already in the support package.
6. Identify the next step. The terminated employee may be disoriented and unsure what to do next. Explain where the employee should go next, upon leaving the interview.

45. The Exit Process and Termination Interview (2 of 2)
Outplacement Counseling
For The Employee
Exit Interview
The Exit Process
Outplacement Counseling – With this, the employer arranges for an outside firm to provide terminated employees with career planning and job search skills.
For the Employee – What should you do if you get fired or passed over for a position?
Most people surrender to the usual stages of shock, denial, and anger. However, the better first step is usually to think through why you lost the job. Doing so isn’t easy. Actively explore what (if anything) you did to contribute to the problem. Then objectively consider what you might do differently in the future, keeping in mind that you should view the loss (difficult though this may be) as an opportunity. Then evaluate your new options and be ready to seize the right opportunity.
Exit Interview – Many employers conduct exit interviews with employees leaving the firm. These are interviews, usually conducted by a human resource professional just prior to the employee leaving, that elicit information about the job or related matters aimed at giving employers insights into their companies.
The Exit Process – The exit interview is just one part of a rational exit process. The employer should follow a checklist.

46. Layoffs & The Plant Closing Law
Non-disciplinary separations may be initiated by either employer or employee.
Layoff – is when an employer sends employees home due to a lack of work; this is typically a temporary situation but can turn out to be permeant.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act, or the plant closing law) requires employers of 100 or more employees to give 60 days’ notice before closing a facility or starting a layoff of 50 or more people.

47. Adjusting to Downsizing and Mergers
The right people are released
Compliance with Law
Just and Fair
Security
Reducing Uncertainty
Downsizing means reducing, usually dramatically, the number of people employed by a firm. The basic idea is to cut costs and raise profitability. Downsizings (some call them “productivity transformation programs”) require careful consideration of several matters:
1. First is making sure the right people are let go; this requires having an effective appraisal system in place.
2. Second is compliance with all applicable laws, including WARN.
3. Third is executing the dismissals in a manner that is just and fair.
4. Fourth is security, for instance, retrieving keys and ensuring that those leaving don’t take prohibited items with them.
5. Fifth is reducing the remaining employees’ uncertainty and addressing their concerns. This typically involves a post-downsizing announcement and program, including meetings where senior managers field questions from the remaining employees.

48. What you should now know….
Chapter 10 Review
What you should now know….
In review of Chapter 10, you should now be able to:
10-1. Describe what employers and supervisors can do to support employees’ career development needs.
10-2. Explain why career development can improve employee engagement.
10-3. Describe a comprehensive approach to retaining employees.
10-4. List and briefly explain the main decisions employers should address in reaching promotion and other employee life-cycle career decisions.
10-5. Explain each of the main grounds for dismissal.

49. Copyright