Firing a Christian

Q: I am the head of a company. I have an employee who cant deliver despite our efforts to help him with his job. My question is, is it unchristian to fire a person from his job? knowing fully well that his family will be affected. Is there a biblical learning from this? Thank you.

A: Thank you for your question. Absolutely not. It is not "unchristian" to fire a person from his job. The fact that you are concerned about how firing him will affect his family is the Christian thing to do. But, look at it in a different light. Is it Christian to reward a bad employee by allowing him to continue to work for you? Eventually, his poor performance may affect the company's bottom line, employee morale and may even cost you employees who resign from your company because they can no longer work with this man. If all that were to happen how will all the families of those employees, including your own, be affected by not firing him? Is that Christian? I would say that it is not. Are you willing to stake your reputation on the poor job performance of one employee? I am not aware of any specific Bible verse or passage that speaks directly to your situation, but there are passages that talk about subjects like leadership, morality and business ethics.

Colossians 4:1 says, "Masters, give your bondservants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven." In many ways you are a "master" and your employees are "bondservants." Allowing an employee to maintain their job even though their work is substandard is not just and fair in my opinion. You have other employees who do "deliver" on the job and don't require your "efforts to help" them. Their jobs are just as important as the employee you are contemplating firing. There families are affected by the income their jobs provide. To allow an employee to keep their job over your concern about the consequences of losing that job will have on his family is not being just and fair to the other employees. Do the hardworking employees have more incentive to work or less incentive to work when they see their colleague being treated like them despite not pulling his own weight? I have worked in environments where other employees are not being disciplined for their poor work performance. The employees who see this going on do not feel the incentive to keep working as hard as they do because it obviously does not register with the leadership. They see no need to do their job correctly when one person who doesn't do their job gets to keep it.

In 1 Corinthians 15:33, it says, "Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits." The good habits of your hardworking, producing employees will be corrupted by the one individual who is not pulling their own weight. Popular sayings like "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch" or "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link" come to mind when I think about you not firing this bad employee. You will always have one eye on this employee and whether or not his presence is going to adversely affect others. How much money have you spent training and retraining this individual only to not see the return on your investment? What other areas of your business have suffered because you were unable to direct resources to those areas while you dealt with this one employee? When I worked in this type of environment I spent my spare time looking for another place to work. If you reward bad behavior, it will only do one thing; corrupt the good habits of other employees. Then what will you do if you all of a sudden have two poor employees, then three and so on? Eventually, you will have to fire all of them when you could have avoided the whole thing by firing this employee first.

Integrity is the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards. Proverbs 11:3 says, "The integrity of the upright will guide them, But the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them." As a head of your company, I know you strive to maintain high moral principles or professional standards. Sometimes in the effort to adhere to these beliefs, hard decisions have to be made. The employee you are considering firing is not living up to the standards that you have set for your company, your employees or for yourself. Therefore, there comes a time like now where you may need to fire an employee in order to live up to those values. Be encouraged that you are not being unchristian. There are times when the loving thing to do is to relieve someone of their duties. It may actually benefit them because their talents may not be suited for the type of job you are asking them to perform. It also may shine a light on their own attitudes that lead them to being a substandard employee. I trust you will be able to find the right words to say and take the appropriate action. God is with you regardless of what decision you make. My prayer is that you find peace with that decision and that it is received well by the gentleman in question and the other employees of your company. Grace and Peace.