Strategic Human Resource Management

Section Four

Termination Strategies

Although terminations may be indicative of deficiencies in other
human resource management systems, they are often required
for organizational change and have even been categorized as
an organizational development process. As such, terminations
may be critical for the implementation of a shift in the strategic
direction of an organization. Terminations of managers have
been necessary in organizational evolutions in which managers,
who can work effectively within an informal structure, cannot
adapt to the more formal structure required with growth in
size. Terminations also have been used where entrepreneurs,
who were effective in founding companies, could not make the
transition to the different managerial requirements of a
bureaucratic environment.^77

Companies should develop approaches toward
termination that assure employees that termination will be for
just cause and that the performance appraisal, coaching, and
counseling systems will have warned them that their
performance must improve or that certain behaviors are
unacceptable. However, companies also must terminate
employees in a manner that communicates that substandard
performance and inappropriate behaviors will result in
termination. Companies need an approach that eliminates
unsatisfactory performers while allowing competent employees