If you let them go, why do you bring them back?

I just don’t get it. For years many organizations have been letting people go and then returning them as contract employees. In the recent years educational (K-12) schools have been doing the same. In fact many people make more money this way than they did when working as a full time employee.

One of the main reasons this is done is financial and it helps the company or school to save on paying benefits and pensions. This makes sense when the employee is valuable and continues to add value with their pride of workmanship.

However, this post is about the employees that are forced in to early retirement or let go and then brought back in as temporary or part-time employees. This group of employees is less than desirable for many reasons like an inability to change, poor work ethic and an attitude that destroys moral and cohesiveness.

It’s also about leaders who remove people from a position of authority or leadership and move them in to a new role instead of letting them go to start fresh somewhere else. I have experienced more times that not the employee being reassigned for being a poor worker is left to wallow in resentment, bitterness and pity for all to see, hear and to deal with for a long time that ultimately gets worse as time goes by for all workers involved. New employees get trained by some of these people and end up just as bad as the person that was replaced.

Sometimes change is needed to clean up a polluted lake. The lake will stay polluted as long as those in charge refuse to believe it is polluted or won’t realize they are the ones polluting the lake with their decisions like the ones stated above.

So instead of creating a fresh clean lake and removing the waste upfront from the environment many organizations and educational institutions create a new lake and hope everyone will start keeping it clean.

The point is this, it’s a just a matter of time before the new clean lake becomes as polluted as the old because those in position of authority will not confront situations and make the tough decisions that are required for improvements to take place.

Our education system has started so many lakes but they have no filters or decision makers that will accept the current ways of leading and doing things will end in the same polluted manner over and over again.