Stephen Morrisey set up the Irish subsidiary of a thriving American company, building up a strong business. Since the recession began to take hold, however, he has had problems with a popular team leader who is ignoring targets
WITH A FIRST-CLASS honours degree in commerce under his belt, Stephen Morrisey joined the Irish office of one of the then “Big Eight” international accountancy firms in 1992. Once he had qualified as a chartered accountant, he sat the Institute of Taxation examinations and became a manager in the corporate tax and finance division. When an opportunity arose for a secondment to one of the firm’s offices in the United States, he jumped at the chance.
Morrisey loved working on the west coast and his in-depth knowledge of the Irish taxation system was quickly in demand at growing companies interested in expanding into Europe.
In time, Morrisey was headhunted by a thriving firm that provided a range of back office services, primarily to the financial services sector. He did well there and the company was happy with his performance.
Morrisey had been at the company for 12 months when his boss explained the real reason for hiring him. He wanted him to return to Ireland and set up an operation there.
While the business already had operations in North America and the Asia Pacific area, it wanted to get a foothold in Europe and to open offices in a number of locations there.
Morrisey was happy to take up the opportunity. From the start, his management style reflected the culture of the parent company, modified by some of the approaches he had learnt while doing an MBA in the US.
His boss favoured a team-based corporate environment in which team leaders were expected to keep their staff happy and productive. Morrisey was happy with this approach and he sought to create an open and highly participative structure for the new business in Ireland.
On the advice of team-building consultants, his human resource department adopted a popular psychometric test to evaluate employees and to help the company in succession planning.
This was important, he felt, because the European business was in growth mode. Many of the young people joining the firm were being promoted quickly simply because he needed to do so to cope with expansion.
If promotions to senior positions failed to deliver, there were opportunities to move people sideways into new roles or to restructure teams as a way of ensuring that weaker managers did not interfere with the overall performance of the organisation.
Times changed, however, and the economic downturn began to bite. As business slowed, Morrisey began to suspect that the supposedly superior team-building approach strongly advocated by the consultants was not all they had claimed it would be. They had stressed that an inclusive dialogue with all staff would help to ensure consensus and staff loyalty in bad times as well as good.
Now, in the face of sharp revenue declines in a number of markets, the business needed managers to make hard decisions to contain costs. Endless sessions of staff round tables and workshops, mediated by the consultants, were getting him nowhere, he felt.
Increasingly, a number of his key regional and function managers shared this view too. Many of them secretly had been suspicious of the value of the “touchy feely” approach favoured by the HR department.
Then Morrisey found himself in a real quandary. One of his key team leaders, based in Ireland but with responsibilities in Europe also, was causing him serious concern.
When he had been taken on, the leader had established a good rapport with his young team quickly. He was highly popular as a manager with staff in Ireland and in Europe. Perennially sociable, he was well able to bring people along with him on decisions. His resumé was impressive and Morrisey felt he had considerable promise as a manager. In addition, all the pre-employment evaluations had suggested that he had an ideal temperament for the position and empathy with the company’s ethos.
Initially, the new team leader performed well. He quickly became the life and soul of his department and proved himself well up to doing the job. His team was happy, productive and worked well together, with little friction between staff members.
The HR director would hold up this team as a shining example of a well integrated unit at senior management meetings.
As the recession began to take hold, however, Morrisey noticed a change in attitude from this team leader. Initially he thought it reflected concern over potential redundancies. So he reassured staff that there were no plans to lay people off.
Then Morrissey wondered whether the manager had simply become bored with his role and needed a new challenge. This was denied emphatically, however, and the leader resisted several offers to move to a new position.
At the same time, Morrisey felt the easy relationship between them had changed. There was nothing specific he could put his finger on but he felt he was encountering subtle resistance not only from the leader but also from members of his team.
The team’s morale remained high but its productivity began to slide and its performance deteriorated bit by bit. Every time Morrisey tackled the leader for failing to deliver on key performance indicators, he offered highly plausible excuses. He also claimed that the targets were unrealistic in the current business climate.
Morrisey knew this was largely wishful thinking. True, they were tough but Morrisey was convinced that, with a greater sense of determination and focus, they were still achievable. Instead of driving his team hard, however, the manager was letting them off the hook. He would tell them to do their best but not to worry about trying to realise the company’s “unrealistic” targets.
Morrisey spent a lot of time trying to get inside the manager’s head in an effort to understand this change in attitude. He felt the manager’s behaviour was undermining his authority. What was particularly worrying was that this leader’s charismatic personality meant the team was following him instead of looking to Morrisey for leadership.
Having tried and failed to have any sort of meaningful conversation with the leader, Morrisey decided there was no easy way out: the man simply had to go, not just from his current position but from the company before he did any more damage.
What really concerned him about this, however, was how he was going to fire the manager without damaging the team and potentially finding himself with a group of more than 40 disgruntled employees in Ireland and overseas who thought the world of their boss.
The HR director was decidedly unhappy when Morrisey told him the news, pointing out that making the team leader redundant might be an easier option. It would be hard to justify, however, when it was clear that someone else would have to take over the role.
At the same time, it would be virtually impossible, the HR director said, to sack the manager without creating the conditions for a successful claim of unfair dismissal.
The director was equally unhappy when Morrisey told him that the organisational development consultants also had to go too.
As far as Morrisey and a number of senior managers were concerned, there was little value in the highly participative approach. Far from helping the company to make and implement important decisions quickly, it seemed to undermine the leadership of line managers and result in endless rounds of fruitless discussions.
Participation should continue, Morrisey agreed, but in a much more limited way in the future. And yes, the manager had to go and go publicly. It was up to the HR director to find a way that could be achieved without it costing the company a substantial amount.
THE EXPERTS’ ADVICE
THE HR director’s assertion that it would be difficult to get rid of this manager is true but it has to be done. It would seem that targets exist but nobody paid attention to them until recently. If normal procedures had been followed, this individual could have been forced to leave the organisation on non-performance grounds. It seems, however, that no paper trail exists regarding the conversations they had about targets and objectives.
That is just part of the problem, however. This organisation has deeper issues. Look at how the company has developed. People were hired in a seemingly ordered manner but then promoted in a haphazard way. A company should give as much thought to who it promotes as to who it hires.
Staff were recruited on the basis of an interview and psychometric testing, a combination that usually gives a good indicator of success. It is doubtful whether it can indicate managment potential, however.
The company grew rapidly and, as can often happen in these situations, ignored performance issues. It simply moved weak staff into new roles. Usually this lack of discipline and adherence to good management principles comes back to haunt companies.
Morrisey is expecting this manager to change how he does his job by sticking to targets and addressing the serious issues that now face the company. Why should this manager take Morrisey seriously when he appears to have abdicated responsibility by hiring consultants to do his job?
So should the HR director find a way to get rid of the underperforming manager? Yes. It may be unfair but the reality is that the person in charge wants him gone. This company does not seem averse to reorganising from time to time, so this may be a way out.
The HR director has a much more difficult task ahead of him: he needs to sit down with Morrisey and tell him a few home truths. Morrisey has to take a strong hand in setting the direction of the business and taking decisions, rather than letting consultants do so.
By all means, he should allow staff to have input, but he has to make the final decision. Allowing everyone to sit around in open forums without telling them what outcome is expected or at the very least giving some clear direction, will result in talking shops that just increase the coffee bill.
Morrisey appears to have developed a company that has many good traits where employees are included and helped if they are not doing very well. He needs to understand that hard decisions must be taken at some point and that he has the ultimate responsibility.
– Jack Byron
MORRISEY and his HR director must identify the level and type of risk they are prepared to take in respect of the team leader. It seems likely he has more than one year’s service with the company and, therefore, would have the right to claim unfair dismissal if his employment were terminated. In law, a dismissal is unfair unless there are substantial grounds to justify it. The onus is on the employer to establish this and to show that its conduct in that regard was reasonable.
If Morrisey is determined that the team leader leave the company, he must identify a way of terminating his employment. The Unfair Dismissals Acts provide for potentially fair reasons for dismissal, one of which is making the team leader redundant.
Another to be considered in this case is conduct, where the team leader is undermining Morrisey’s management. This approach is confrontational and may affect the morale of the team.
Making him redundant may be legally risky too, however, because of Morrisey’s conversation with the team leader in respect of undermining his authority. The team leader may claim the redundancy is not impersonal but is a form of sanction, without having gone through an appropriate process. If he established this, it would be an unfair dismissal.
If Morrisey wants to discipline the team leader for his conduct, fair procedures must be followed. This involves allegations being put to the team leader and giving him an opportunity to answer the allegations before an impartial person (not Morrisey), to question witnesses and to be represented if he so wishes.
Dismissal may be found to be a disproportionate sanction, depending on the evidence there is of the manager telling his team not to worry about realising the company’s “unrealistic” targets.
Redundancy may be hard to justify if it is clear that someone else would have to take over the job. As Morrisey is unhappy with the current way of working, this may not be the case. There may be a need to restructure the business to reflect the planned changed way of working, so that the work or number of team leaders will change.
The definition of redundancy is not as simple as it may appear. Here it could be that the employer is reducing its team leader numbers or doing the work in a way requiring different qualifications or training. Selection for redundancy must be fair and non-discriminatory.
Either approach carries risks. The employer could also agree a severance package with the team leader but would need to have a comprehensive termination agreement where the team leader has appropriate independent advice. The employer cannot have talks off the record to reach such an agreement and would benefit from independent legal advice and representation.
– Michelle Ní Longáin
THERE IS NO evidence of Morrisey dealing with underperformance in the company in the past. For example, the team leader had “highly plausible excuses” for not achieving targets and Morrisey seems to have accepted these.
In essence, Morrisey is no different from his manager: what worked for both of them in good times, is not working now. Morrisey seems to be taking this personally, though, and wants to assert his authority by a public dismissal, almost as a warning to everyone else.
As a senior executive, he needs to be more pragmatic. It is difficult to see how anyone would benefit from this approach and it is a very damaging way to show you are in control.
Going public with any separation from the company would have a serious impact on employee morale. The company espoused a team-based environment, with considerable focus on team leaders and their staff as the key unit in the company structure.
Morrisey has allowed a culture within a culture to develop. This team has become dysfunctional and their loyalty is to their team leader, not to the overall organisation.
A public dismissal would send a very definite message to all employees, but a very negative one. Such a public display of authority would be very damaging and could extend across the whole organisation, not just this one team. It could change the level of trust and loyalty between employees and senior management and the effects could be long-lasting.
That said, there is too much at stake for the organisation and its employees, to allow one dysfunctional team to drag it down. Morrisey needs to start providing direction, managing and dealing with issues rather than letting them develop to this point. He owes it to the rest of the organisation.
The relationship between Morrisey and his team leader may very well have broken down irretrievably. Once trust and respect are lost, they can be very difficult to regain.
In this situation, the best option for all may be for Morrisey to get to an agreed exit with this team leader – but this could not be public. Morrisey needs to find the option that is best for the whole organisation and that causes the least damage. Then deal with it.
- Claire Dunne
