I am a dentist. I felt strongly that half my staff was against me (4 of 7 employees). So I fired them. I inherited them when I bought my business a few years ago. I am very ethical but I do care about gross revenue (as any owner should). They never fully embraced caring about revenue production or understanding that bonus pay is tied to profitability. Nonetheless, I feel it is a failing on my part as a leader that they as a group were not on my team. What can I do as a small business owner to display better leadership and engender better office morale. I should mention that I pay above market wages, have better benefits than market competitors, work with my employees to satisfy the number of hours they need and I run a schedule that is very predictable 8-5 with a lunch and we do not deviate. Further, we take great care of our patients and the staff never has to worry about patient satisfaction or quality of care. Thank you for your input.
Dude, feeling that the staff isn’t doing their job and firing them is good business. Feeling that the staff is against you personally, waiting a few years to fire them and then firing 4/7 staff is bad business. You just destroyed the morale of the remaining staff members. That is too big a percent to fire at once. The remaining staff members will be severely and adversely affected due to the number of people you fired at once. Do you expect the remaining 3 members of the staff to pick up the work of the four fired because that is what the remaining three are thinking right now. They are also worried that they will be the next to be fired especially if you say that the reason you fired the four was that they were against you. It just sounds paranoid. So don’t transmit this to the remaining staff. You have some explaining to do. Tell them exactly what happened and why without sounding paranoid. Then tell them you are not going to fire them because they are all doing a good job and you will be hiring replacements immediately to replace the four fired. Be friendly, understanding and supportive of any issues this causes the remaining staff members or they won’t be around very long. Next time don’t wait so long and don’t fire almost 60 % of your staff at once.