Throughout your career you will be faced with employees that seem to fail no matter how hard you try to help them succeed. You attempt many methods to help them perform but it seems no matter what you do they just don’t seem to care about what they do or their job.

This is not about someone who makes honest mistakes, is a little forgetful, and might be in the wrong role based on their strengths. This is about that person who just seems to not care and no matter how hard you have tried they will not be engaged.

To give this advice I am going to walk you through a story of someone that worked my team and was in this situation. This gentleman was an mid/entry level employee and one of my managers came to me to discuss the challenge he was facing. I knew this manager very well and he has a strong leadership toolkit and knew that if he was coming with this I needed to listen carefully. So this is the problem in a nutshell.

The employee missed work several times without prior notice. He was given verbal or written reprimands each time.

The employee missed work several times without prior notice. He was given verbal or written reprimands each time. Knowing the manager, I am sure he did a good job communicating the problem it caused us as a company, the importance of said employee and the job he does, and our expectations going forward. The employee was also spotted doing substandard work, taking long breaks, and not performing well in the training sessions we have to develop our people.

gentleman simply didn’t care.

Not every case is this easy to spot and it is exceptionally apparent that the gentleman simply didn’t care. This person missed work again without notice so the next step was to fire him and send him on his way. However, I knew this particular person and the manager said he had potential so we decided to throw the Hail Mary pass to try to save him as an employee.

those working in the facility know that I have empathy and care deeply about people who work for me

I told my HR person to send me the employees dismissal documents so I could sign them and scheduled a meeting to meet with him myself. In the meeting, I invited HR (have to make sure I don’t get myself in trouble with the law!) and his manager in the company conference room. He knows who I am and thankfully him and the majority of those working in the facility know that I have empathy and care deeply about people who work for me while being aware I am fair and will fire people for the benefit of the team.

I shook his hand, invited him to a cup of coffee and had some small talk to attempt to make the situation a little more comfortable for him. Then I started by telling him that we as a company depend on him and the work that he does, we depend on every single person here and the work that they do. Without every person doing their work responsibly, we would quickly not have a company and I would quickly be kicked out the door. With that, I showed him his papers and said “please look at these and notice that I have already signed your dismissal papers” then I took the papers back. I did this because I wanted him to be aware of the gravity of the situation and wanted to make sure I had his complete and undivided attention.

I then told him that it is not my purpose in this company to fire people, one of my main goals is to develop and help them

I then told him that it is not my purpose in this company to fire people, one of my main goals is to develop and help them. I told him that I did not want to fire him but feel that at this juncture the responsible and fair action to do would be to move forward and explained how his actions can impact the moral of those who work with him. Then I asked him directly; “do desire to work here”? When he told me he wants to work there I asked him what he believes is causing these issues to see if there is any way we could work together to solve them. He offered up a few reasons why he believed he was acting the way that he was and we discussed at length all of those situations. We then established a mutual goal and the path forward to get there. Once that was done, I told him that I would keep his papers in my drawer and he needs to understand that as a responsible leader I would have to take immediate action if he didn’t want to meet the goals we set.

His performance is excellent to this day.

The very next day he showed up to work early and engaged but as we all know that is usually the case and then it goes back to the way things used to be. However, I made sure my manager helped him and reminded him of this opportunity. His performance is excellent to this day. When Christmas arrived, I sat down and wrote out individual cards for each employee, there was only 120 so I knew them fairly well. In his card I wrote “The problems you face is not what defines you, it’s the actions choose to take”. I was surprised that the day after he got the card he showed up in my office in tears to thank me and explained to me how he showed his wife the card and talked about it.

I cannot express to you how much that meant to me as a person. Frankly, there is very little that moves me as much knowing that something I did had a deep positive impact in someone else’s life. I hope that this story in some way can help you if/when you face a similar challenge.