I am struggling with managing a subordinate as a manager. While this is not my first time managing people as part of my work (usually as a lead or as a supervisor or while managing crews/events), this is the first time I have had full responsibility of managing someone in an office setting. Obligatory, not in the US.
Recently, a fellow manager, whose department crosses responsibilities with mine, has suggested to me off the books that a particular subordinate should be let go. There are a few reasons cited, which culminated in this discussion.
1. Mistakes made in the line of his work. These are not the same mistakes being made over and over, but more like typos and errors. However, these can lead to serious considerations for the company, should they not have been caught by me. This leads me to having to dedicate time to monitor his output, in an already busy job that I would rather let him run on his own with minimal supervision.
2. Reluctance to take up responsibilities that would contribute to the team, but does not add value to his job scope. This is one of the pain points of my company. My boss refuses to let me increase headcount, but this subordinate refuses to do the follow up work for sales, arguing that it would take more time away from the sales he could be doing, which my boss agrees. However, that leaves the admin and other follow up to me, which I have been overloading myself on. He basically refuses to do any work which wasn’t part of his job scope, or doesn’t contribute to his commissions. He is paid both a salary plus comms for any sales closed.
3. Lack of results. He has placed a lot of effort into making sales calls and cold calling potential customers. However, he has yet to bring in a sale from cold leads from the 1 year of working at my company. Any sales he has closed, is with my assistance on some level, and all from warm leads from the company. He claims he has had 5 years of prior industry experience, which I am beginning to wonder because some of the questions he asks me makes me wonder if he lied on his resume (or oversold himself).
These are the main reasons cited by the other team manager, who has my boss’s ear right now, so any suggestion will be placed of greater importance than mine. Professionally, I find that my subordinate is a hard and earnest worker, in a very competitive industry where every lead is being hotly contested right now. There could be a whole slew of reasons why he is not showing results, but he has yet to make a sale in the past 4 months. My peer said that we have no bandwidth to accommodate an under-performer and someone who doesn’t contribute to the team, which is why we should let him go.
I have a whole lot of problems with my boss and company, but that is for another day. I am just trying to be the best manager I can right now. Some people think I should give him a heads up, some think I should put him on a PIP, some think I should just let him go. What should I do?
