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DISTRIBUTOR UPDATE
How should manufacturers and distributors deal with problem employees?
A
Paul J. Heney • VP, Editorial Director At the recent NAHAD Annual Meeting & Convention in Las Vegas, Pamela Krivda presented one of the more interesting sessions
— dealing with difficult HR decisions. Many smaller component distributors and manufacturers don’t have the luxury of a large human resource department. What’s more, sometimes they don’t fully understand the legal implications of what they do in situations where employees aren’t performing up to standards. She implored the audience to keep written records of every time an employee is given a poor review, spoken to about a work incident or anything else that shows they are not meeting expectations. But one of her most compelling arguments was to do something unexpected with poor performers: suspend them with pay. Krivda said that she doesn’t use it as her first option; this would be after a verbal warning and then a written warning. Then she’d sit down with the employee and first review their prior history — she noted that this is also a way for you to clean up any holes in your documentation. “If a few things weren’t documented, you can get them down now. So, you review the previous history with the employee … and you write everything down. So even if there was a verbal counseling, if you can make the employee sign for it, you write it down in here,” she said. Krivda said that the employee is generally relatively happy that although they’re getting suspended, it is with pay, so they’re not overly concerned about what you write on the incident sheet, as far as past notice. Then, you go over the latest incident — say, being rude to a customer. Krivda would explain why the customer is important and why
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rudeness is never allowable in this sort of situation. “If you’ve got the complaint from a customer, if the customer comes to you, ask them a lot of questions about it — because they’ll be willing to tell you chapter and verse about it. And that makes them feel like they’re not just taking up your time with nothing to complain to,” she said. “Then you’re going tell the employee, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. I want to know what you really think about your job here. Do you want this job or not? Now, if you want the job, you have to have it under the same terms and conditions as everybody else. You don’t get anything special. You have to take it under these same terms and conditions. And the terms and conditions are, you have to be polite and have a can-do attitude toward our customers.’” Krivda said that the employee should then sign a form acknowledging that they want their job as a
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6/13/19 1:02 PM
