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Introduction
Welcome back to Season Three of Linking Our Libraries! We are Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we are here to share information with all types of libraries, archives, and other nonprofits working to build their skills. This season, we are working on building a toolbox of leadership skills and ideas. By the end of this season, you will have fifteen specific skills that will make you a stronger leader and manager in your organization.
This week we discuss two topics managers hate to deal with: Discipline and Termination. No one likes this, but it is vital to keeping your library healthy and functioning.
Joining us is Guest Host Kathy Parker, Director of the St. Ben’s College and St. John’s University libraries.
The Basics
These human resources topics are deceptively hard to discuss. On the one hand: employees do the wrong things, or are terrible, or get caught up in budget cuts, or other situations will occur. This will definitely happen, and managers will need to develop strategies to best handle them.
On the other hand – this is not an area where you can just guess what to do. Laws are involved; and good intentions are not wrong, but are not enough to depend on to know you are making the right decision and doing the right thing. We are not giving any legal advice here, and we really encourage you to talk to your library’s or your city or your college’s HR department, and their attorneys before you make decisions. Depending on where you work, you may also have union rules that you need to follow.
Not disciplining employees, and not terminating employees, is not an option. So let’s talk about ways to do this well. We are going to skim some of the big areas of these topics to get everyone started in thinking about it, and putting together policies and procedures for your library.
Discipline
No manager enjoys this part of the job. It would be much better if everyone would just do their jobs, not cause trouble, and be perfectly skilled and behave. But things happen, even in the most wonderful organization. And it would be very irresponsible of managers to let poor performance or bad behavior continue.
Some typical levels you might include of the disciplinary hierarchy:
- Verbal warning
- Written warning
- Suspension
- Termination
You do not need to follow these steps in order, or at all. If someone comes in late, you should probably not jump right to termination; if someone sets a fire in your rare book room, you do not need to start with a verbal warning for their first offense.
The focus should not be on punishing your individual employee, but on changing behavior that is not useful. Get her to talk about it and to share ideas about the problem; it may help stimulate some strategies for solving the problem. Helping the employee to set goals for themselves may be useful in getting to the more helpful behavior. Then you need to follow up, and to ensure progress is being made toward those goals.
Termination
This is one of the most difficult parts of a manager’s job. But things happen. And as a manager, it is your responsibility to let people go when it is time. If it is necessary, then you need to do it, and do it well. Libraries too often have managers focused on being “nice” and not wanting to have conflict, and they leave bad employees in place. This creates a toxic environment.
It is not fair to people who cannot do a job to leave them there. It’s not fair to your staff to have a person in a job who complains and creates dissent constantly. It is not fair to patrons to leave a person in the job who treats them rudely, or is unable to meet their needs. Termination is a hard thing, but it is sometimes a necessary action.
Terminations can happen for all kinds of different reasons:
- Unsatisfactory Performance: the colleagues of this person will be happy you did this
- Misconduct: this can happen at work, or away from the library
- Layoffs: try to be as transparent as possible because everyone will be tense
- End of a Contract: this one should not be a surprise – but keep on top of dates and deadlines
- Expiration of a Leave: if the person is unable to return to work because they or their family members are still sick or injured – this one is really hard
Let’s say the decision has been made, you have consulted with the appropriate people (HR office, any attorney, union rep, etc.) and the paperwork is done. Now you just need to tell the staff member.
- Have a witness in the room, not another staff member – preferably an HR person.
- Have your paperwork in order. You need to protect yourself by ensuring you have the paperwork to show you made a good decision here.
- Have a letter outlining her termination reasons and all benefit she will receive, calculate any remaining vacation days you owe her, sick day payouts, COBRA payments, etc.
- Does she have keys to the building, credit cards, or library property like laptops, iPads, etc.? You need to get all of that back from her.
- Never argue. The now-former staffer will be upset, but the decision is made and it does not help if you respond to an angry employee lashing out at you.
Even though discipline and terminations are hard things, they are important decisions for managers. Stay calm, consult with other people, make good decisions, and stick to them. You are in charge and it is your responsibility to make the library work as well as possible.
So, now we have some ideas about the theory of discipline and terminations. Let’s chat with someone who knows about it in practice!
Books Read
But they are in middle school now. Zach’s father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she’s been having dreams about the Queen—and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.
Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?”
From the moment its shadow falls over the village, Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, suspects the creature has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing. What can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized.
But when the figure vanishes overnight and a body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to discover if a debt has been paid or levied.
Months later, on a steamy July day as the trial for the accused begins in Montréal, Chief Superintendent Gamache continues to struggle with actions he set in motion that bitter November, from which there is no going back. More than the accused is on trial. Gamache’s own conscience is standing in judgment.
In Glass Houses, her latest utterly gripping book, number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny shatters the conventions of the crime novel to explore what Gandhi called the court of conscience. A court that supersedes all others.”
Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer?
How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God.
Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.”
Conclusion
This was an overview of some tough actions that library managers need to take to keep their organizations working most effectively. We cannot give you legal advice here – and most HR matters will involve legality. So always make a point of talking to your library’s HR department and /or the attorney. And if your parent organization has these people – then talk to them from your college, your school, your hospital, or whoever else is near you. Be fair, and do the right thing.
Thanks to our Guest Host Kathy! And check back in with us next week to discuss our next topic: Decision-making.