DILEMMA OF THE MONTH
I Fire Bad Employees . Why Do I Have to Pay for Their Unemployment Benefits ?
BY Suzanne Lucas
ILLUSTRATION : JOHN CHASE
I ’ m tired of having people get unemployment benefits when I fired them for being bad employees . Stealing , lying and coming in late — it doesn ’ t seem to matter . What can I do to make sure people don ’ t get unemployment payments ? Can I document better ?
It must be really frustrating ! And I have a way to reduce your unemployment obligations substantially , but it will be difficult and will only work if you make significant changes . Are you ready ? Fix yourself . If you have to regularly terminate people for stealing , lying and coming in late , there is something wrong with either your hiring practices or your management skills . Here ’ s what you need to do .
Fix your hiring practices
You ’ re hiring the wrong people in the first place . You ’ re picking people who are likely to steal , lie and come in late — among other things . Take a look at your hiring practices and figure out where you ’ re going wrong . Here are some things to help you get started :
• Are you putting too much emphasis on the interview and not enough on experience ? Unless the job involves regularly interviewing people , an interview isn ’ t the best judge of someone ’ s skills . You may be wowed by people who interview well but have a shoddy work history .
• Are you limiting yourself to younger employees because they seem to have more energy or rejecting currently unemployed candidates because you believe it was surely their own fault for getting fired ? Any time you limit
28 comstocksmag . com | July 2022