Managing out

[Lemons1571]

I work in a sector where managing out is common. It seems to basically take the form of bullying someone out because of perceived failings / weaknesses / personality clashes. The employer is set up to fail, and no matter what they do it is made impossible for them to improve. The manager just finds another stick to beat them with.

Often this goes on for months, with the employee trying harder and harder, and the management upping the justification for the ongoing performance management. It massively affects the morale of the rest of the team, who all know what’s going on even though it’s “confidential”.

Eventually, the beaten employee either resigns, or goes on long term sick leave (and a compromise deal is done).

AIBU to think there must be a better way to end the working relationship than this? I am writing as a team member who has witnessed this several times, and now has to take over a team who are demoralised, feeling a bit battered, and have siloed themselves as protection.

must be. i was promoted in march but feel i am now being managed out. i'm fairly senior and so expensive i guess. anyone else been managed out of a senior role? it's really starting to affect my confidence

Wasn’t managed out but put in a position where I had to walk. While most of my career was v positive I always made sure I had the ammunition to fire back if the situation arose. It can happen to anyone at any time.
Keep those emails and make sure you don’t ever do anything that can be used against you, like breaking company rules because your boss tells you to. If they insist, you ask for the instruction in writing. Once you do that they will back down. You might still have to walk but equally they will have to pay you off.
Good luck

I hate this idea.Trying to break someone or make them decide to leave.
Absolutely hideous way to treat anyone I guess fearing being sued for firing someone makes bosses do it.

Very common in schools. Partially why there is such a shortage

Literally happening to me right now…

maybe you’re my colleague (you seem nice, hope you are) if so reach out, let’s take the cow down

If you are in a school make sure you're in a union.

I think it would be better on both sides if there could be some sort of "managed exit" plan, where an employee was guaranteed up to a year's employment, but could be told to basically look for another job with a good reference.

I've been on the other side of this, having inherited two staff to manage who both had a long history with the company. One with a poor disciplinary record and an equally poor performance record, who had always just skated above unacceptable. She was a massive drag on relationships between the whole team. Another guy who performed well, but had a horrible, negative attitude and by the end, a huge anger problem that was way above what you could expect an employer to reasonably handle.

Possibly they saw my "enough is enough" approaches as managing out. From my perspective, I was the first person to actually story to systematically address their failures/effect on atmosphere.

It was bloody brilliant when they were gone. Everyone - even their close friends in the company - got on so much better without them there.

thanks all. has anyone been managed out of a job that 100k plus a year, taken comp agreement and gone on to get another job of similar grade etc

Happened to me. It's broken my mental health tbh.

On the other side, I've seen a good amount of employees over the years who don't pull their weight at the same standard as the rest of the team, where they do just enough to avoid being pulled into the office. They've normally been in a company long enough that they are working at standards acceptable when there were more staff, but I don't know any company that hasn't had to reduce hours/ increase workload in the last 10 years, so their way of working just means that others are having to do even more. But because they've been there a while, no one wants to be the one to address the problem.

as in you had a six fig sal and managed out

bumping

I’ve been managed out and yep it’s crap.

To be honest I should have left well before it happened as it was a small business run by someone who HATED me. Directly this person’s husband appeared and decided to bring his managerial experience to the table it was a world of pain for me.

Frequent appraisals where I was criticised. Micro management. Impossible deadlines. Raises for everyone bar me and finally accusations of theft. They eventually admitted to me that they were worried I was going to take them to a tribunal for constructive dismissal. Luckily I just wanted out at that point and left where my life just took off as fortunately I was NONE of the things they accused me of and have been valued in every subsequent workplace since.

My advice for anyone who is at the beginning of this is just get out. Your mental health is precious and no job is worth losing it for. I’d rather be homeless that accept being treated like that again.

In the private sector in many businesses people are just taken aside and asked to leave if there is a perceived problem or personality clash. In some ways that’s better as performance plans are generally subjective so once you’ve started one, it’s too late.

This was a long time ago. I’d probably be on a zero hour contract in the same job if that had existed then. Crushing someone’s mental health over a prolonged period of time is never okay.

I got managed out of a 75K plus perks and shares job. They offered £12k which they said was fair. I asked for £40k and they gave me £33K to go.
I got another £75k job immediately. I later went on to get a job paying 92K in the same sector, but I've switched now and earn 50K in a much less demanding role. I had to sign an NDA, but I was bullied out. The person who replaced me had to take nearly a year out due to the effects on her mental health. My former employer is a US Tech multinational that trumpets all it's "great place to work" awards, diversity and inclusion etc etc.

Yes I believe I was managed out of a role a year ago. Bullied, put down, work was never good enough with moving boundaries and when it I did her way she'd scream anyway and say she wanted it done the other way.
I wasn't sleeping, I was miserable and anxious all the time. I took her job as an external candidate after her promotion but she didn't interview me and she hated me from day one.
Tbh it forced me to follow a dream when a vacancy elsewhere came up and now I am so happy and settled and in a job.
But it was awful, managing people out is simply bullying

@Lemons1571

Eventually, the beaten employee either resigns, or goes on long term sick leave (and a compromise deal is done).

This could be you before too long- especially if you've been landed the job to manage a demoralised team. Cover your back by documenting everything which might affect your future position (and keep hard copies if you can't bcc your personal email account) to create an audit trail and/or start looking for a different job/better employer. 🌹

"managing out" has become the path of least resistance in many companies now, as kicking people out for poor performance has become so difficult.

I've worked in a number of places where people were lazy or unconsciencious and the only way to get rid of them was to micromanage them.

Too many overconfident-for-their-abilities people seem to be able to breeze into companies and then not deliver; and managing them out is the only option.

Some of the people on this thread should take a long hard look in the mirror and wonder if they really are such victims of this, or whether 20 years ago they would have just got the sack for incompetence.

Maybe not of course.

Bullshit.

The correct way to 'manage out' would be to work with the person to improve whatever the issue is with clearly defined and deliverable goals. Then move through a stepped warning process, and finally dismissal if things don't change.

The wrong way, commonly used by useless cunts with no people or leadership skills, is to confuse, belittle, ignore, target, demean, unsettle, and even lie about people, until they either leave or won't put up a fight when you fire them.

The week I eventually left was about four weeks after I started contemplating driving off the motorway and into a wall on my way to work. So don't tell me that this is what managing out is; it's corporate bullying.

Utter bollocks.

Join a union and get them to deal with it.

🙄

Exactly - despite having 4 years of flawless service, I could have coped with a new boss who wanted everything done completely differently from the old one, despite my job title not having changed, if she had been cooperative about it. I made the error of showing vulnerability and asking for help as it was a massive change and her response was to bully me and put me on a ludicrous PIP that even HR had to agree wasn't fit for purpose as it had vague subjective goals. From that point it just became a game where I had to make complaints etc - just to follow a process and maximise my payout. I had actually been warned by my old boss that was an agenda from 2 levels up from a person who wanted rid of 2 of us because she didn't like us - so in many ways my new boss was being used too. I foolishly didn't heed the warnings as I thought I could prove my worth. You can't prove your worth to people who have already decided to can you, no matter how good you actually are.