When to tell your employees to take a hike

Small companies are like families. They are full of tension, tight relationships, dreams and disappointments and they form a culture all of their own. And when they are small how each and every employee behaves affects the culture of the company. What it is like to come to work every day, how people solve problems, how they interact and help each other, or don't.

In every group of employees you hire you are bound to hire a few non performers, and it's management 101 that you know you have to move the non performers out. That's what having an accountable team or a performance culture means.

But there is a group of employees that is harder to move on. I'm sure you've worked with people like this. They are good at their job but they are like dripping poison. They talk about "this place" or "this company" in negative terms. They make snide remarks about the leadership or about their coworkers. They work for you because it's a good job, but nothing is good enough.

Clearly if the behavior is egregious you can move on the employee and treat it as a performance problem, but what if it's borderline?

One way to handle this is to invite your employees to leave.

The most valuable resource an employee has is their time. Especially when they are in the early stages of their careers. In terms of personal growth and future earning power every year before 40 is more valuable that five after. Your millennial employees are investing in your company with their time learning, growing, inhaling everything they can do to improve their future. So if they are negative why are they there?

I talk to many teams and my logic to invite people to leave goes something like this:

"If you love this company and our mission, if you love working here, then invest your time wisely. Pour in your passion, work hard to make the company and your career they best they can be. Be a part of creating a positive, winning culture. Share your observations with your leaders but bring solutions, not just complaints. Support your leaders - they are human too and doing their best. Be positive.

But if you are unhappy here, if you see all the things that are wrong and you feel a need to continuously complain, if you think your leadership is incompetent, or the work is too hard then please leave. Get out.

Because life is too short to work in a company or a job you don't like for people you don't respect. If you think things could be better then make them better or please leave."

Sometimes I am even more direct - "There's the door".