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The Termination File That Doesn't Exist · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've listened to this podcast for quite a while, maybe, and perhaps you've listened to even the episodes done here on the Health Church Staff Podcast on how to fire one.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm finding, what I'm hearing, is that most churches, if they had to, couldn't produce a file that really serves as a backup for everything that they're about to do when they go to release somebody from employment.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: No job description, no written warning, no signed offer letter.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of churches just hire like family, and but you try to terminate like you're a corporation with nothing in the folder.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe an elder would ask you for a personnel file and you have a sticky note in a W4 from 2019.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: If this is you, if you're in the midst of contemplating having to let somebody go off of your team and your file is a sticky note, we're going to talk about that today because this is not just another episode today on how to fire.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is about the paper that should have existed actually in week one and what you can do if you don't have that file right now.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com, and we are talking today about firing staff.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not something that any of us like to do, but sometimes it's just necessary.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're family on the way in in our church, but try to go all corporate on the way out.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You hired them over coffee, you called them brother, sister, family, and then the role stopped working over time, and suddenly you wanted some process, some documentation.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: You reached for the corporate playbook.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't have the corporate file though.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The file was empty the whole time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And empty is not a metaphor, it's actually empty.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Open the drawer, pull the file, go ahead and do it right now.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll wait.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding, I can't wait for you to pull the file, but pull the file, see what you've got.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a signed letter offer?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there a Facebook post and handshake?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a job description that they initialed?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or they knew what they were getting into?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is there one written conversation dated specific in an email that they actually received?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or a hallway talk you remember and they just they remember that differently?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a handbook that they signed and I9?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is a manila folder with a name on it and nothing inside of it, you don't really have a personnel file.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have a hope.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you this this might feel like legalism.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hear that a lot.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: This we do treat each other like a family.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a corporation, this is not a business.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But this is not legalism either.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is just not legalism.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Paper is how you're gonna stop the ambush of what's gonna happen when you try to fire someone.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You think the documentation is for lawyers, but no, it's really for the human sitting across from you.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the deal.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Without a job description, when you say things aren't going well or you're not cutting it, that's just a feeling.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Without any kind of written warning, that last conversation is the first sentence that they can hold.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So without a signed offer, you're arguing about a job that you never really both agreed even existed.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not courage, that's almost an ambush with a prayer at the end.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot treat someone fairly on the last day if you never wrote it down on the first day.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know your heart.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: The paper felt cold.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't want to skip the file, maybe because let me say this.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't skip doing all that because you were reckless, you skipped it because you wanted to be warm.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hand checks handshakes felt like trust, and folders just felt you didn't believe in them.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fair.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair, that's decent.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's also how good people get blindsided.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And kindness without a record is still a surprise.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: The file is not a weapon, it's how you tell the truth early enough that the last conversation isn't the first one.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the file is not a termination kit, it's an employment kit.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a huge thing to kind of consider because we think uh a personnel file is, hey, I'm documenting everything in case I need to do that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is really an employment kit.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You start with the offer letter before they even start, the job description that they can point to on a Tuesday, a handbook that actually is the rules, not a PDF that nobody opened.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The I-9 and the boring pages that prove that you notice that they work here.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then, when something's off, a written conversation, not a novel, a paragraph, okay?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: What you saw, what better looks like, and when you'll talk again.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not preparing to fire them.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's treating them like an adult that you actually employ.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you never need the file for a termination, you still needed it for the job.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the gut check today.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you had to produce it tomorrow, say let's say an elder asks or a staff member requests their file, what can you put on the table in 10 minutes?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is we'd have to build it tonight, you already know you have a problem.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You don't build a personnel file on the day that you need one.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times, when we decide that we need to terminate someone, if we don't have a file, then we gotta go back and try and recreate it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the way to do it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: You really have to start it while they have a badge and a Sunday.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So do it for the person that you had no intention of ever letting go.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole point in the first place.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that file only appears when you're firing somebody.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a brief.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's your bottom line for today.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: You hire like family and you terminate like a corporation with no file.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The missing paper isn't legalism, it's how you stop ambushing people.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, I've talked to a ton of people that have been fired, and they say, I didn't see this coming.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes they should have seen it coming.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we as we talk through, I would say, wasn't there's your sign right there.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But obviously there was no documentation, and they felt ambushed.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want especially if you consider your staff family, and I did a whole episode on that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to ambush people.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this week, I want you to do something maybe a little bit uncomfortable.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pull one personnel file.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yours or a direct report.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't if it doesn't have a signed letter, offer letter, or a job description, and one written conversation, start the file now.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just start it now.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for a termination.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do it this week.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one sounds picky, but I also know you don't want to ambush anybody.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And people that don't have a good personnel file are the ones that before they're talking to the person they're gonna fire, they're calling their attorney and saying, saying, What can I do here?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do here?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you have everything in the file, you know exactly you've got the track record, you've got the the documents.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you were ever going to use them to fire somebody, but because it's their it's not their firing file, it's their personnel file.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why you're listening, because you want some help, you want to be challenged here, and this is one of the areas that I think a lot of us need to be challenged in.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you have this file, and that if you don't have if you don't have a place where all of your personnel files are, that's a start.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then just start one by one adding as you go.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: But don't just add the bad stuff, add the good stuff too.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: They did this really well, they did this really well.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: They need some improvement here.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: If there's any help that I can give you, maybe some advice on hiring or firing, maybe it's some advice on setting up your personnel files.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk with you and see if there's a way that we can come alongside you and your church, either myself personally or one of my team here at Chemistry Staffing, you can reach out to me.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast at Chemistry Staffing is the email address, podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to hear from you and see if there's a way that we can partner with you and help your church.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today, and we will be right back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church That Podcast with you everybody.