How To Fire An Employee: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re a leader, there are few things that can ruin your day more than needing to fire an employee. It’s just plain hard to do, even when you know it’s the right decision. Firing employees isn’t personal—it’s business. And yet, many managers avoid it altogether, which ultimately disrupts the team and the business.

Terminations can go wrong in a myriad of ways: the employee is surprised, the offboarding process isn’t in place, they’re concerned about their final paycheck, necessary forms and documents are missing, key folks in the org haven’t been alerted, or there’s ambiguity. This is why planning a respectful and efficient employee termination meeting is essential.

In this post, you’ll find a simple rubric on how to do employee terminations well—plus a sample script to guide the conversation. We hope this makes terminations a little less painful and helps you lean into the hard stuff with more ease. 

First, here’s a quick overview. 

1. Reflect and Document
   Before making the decision to fire an employee, ensure you’ve documented performance issues and disciplinary actions, provided feedback, and followed your internal processes. If you haven’t already, pause to reflect on whether this is a performance issue, a values mismatch, or a structural or financial need.
2. Align with HR and Legal
   Loop in your human resources team (or seek legal advice) to review documentation, assess risk, and ensure you’re compliant with company policy and local labor laws. The last thing you want is to run into any legal issues.
3. Plan the Logistics
   Coordinate with IT to revoke access, prepare the final paycheck, gather any company property, understand local employment laws, and have paperwork ready for next steps. Choose a quiet, private location for the termination conversation.
4. Prepare the Message
   Be prepared and know what you’re going to say. This is not a negotiation or a performance review. The person being fired will be upset. Be direct, kind, and brief. Avoid emotional justifications or over-explaining.
5. Hold the Termination Meeting
   Signal at the start that this will be a difficult conversation. State clearly that their employment is ending, reference previous conversations if applicable, and provide next steps regarding benefits, logistics, and offboarding.
6. Support the Employee’s Exit
   Offer space to process, share a written summary if needed, and provide any relevant transition resources. Let them know whom they can follow up with.
7. Communicate Internally
   Inform key stakeholders and your team with discretion. Don’t overexplain—but do help people make sense of the decision and reiterate cultural values.
8. Reflect and Improve Your Process
   After the termination, review what worked, what didn’t, and whether your performance management system needs refinement moving forward.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the moments that matter, starting with how to decide if termination is the right step.

You don’t have to face terminations alone. Explore how Reboot Coaching can help you build robust feedback systems that make difficult conversations clearer and more compassionate.

Deciding When to Fire an Employee (and How to Prepare)

“The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.” – Tom Peters

As a business owner or leader, firing an employee from your team is not fun. It’s just plain hard to do, even when you know it’s the right decision. This is one of many responsibilities that can contribute to executive burnout. Still, avoiding termination can lead to greater harm across the organization, especially when poor performance is allowed to continue.

In moments where it’s clear someone is no longer a fit for the role—assuming there hasn’t been gross misconduct—the first thing you’ll want to do is reflect inward. Have your onboarding, performance management, employee handbook, and feedback processes supported or failed you up to this point?

Many startups operate without a dedicated HR lead, which means employee performance management systems often fall through the cracks. We see it every day with our CEO coaching clients. That’s why proactive employee feedback, performance improvement plans, and regular check-ins are essential.

Enter the highlighted importance of manager training, clear role expectations, comprehensive new employee onboarding, 30-60-90+ day check-ins, feedback-rich cultures, a well-run performance review process, annual job description reviews–and all of the crucial practices and systems that set up employees for success. 

Firing can go wrong in a myriad of ways: they’re surprised, the offboarding process is not in place, necessary forms and documents are missing, key folks in the org haven’t been alerted, or there’s ambiguity. Coordinating your termination meeting with IT and HR, ensuring system access is revoked, and preparing the final paycheck are all necessary steps.

How to Conduct a Termination Meeting (The Real-World Guide)

Reboot coach, Virginia Bauman, tells us that firing an employee is uncomfortable, no matter the situation. She shares the following guide for firing employees that is clear, concise, and aligned to create the best experience in the event of a termination. 

Know that the person’s nervous system will likely go into full alert.

Be absolutely clear that it’s not a conversation. It’s information and clarity on what is about to happen, so they can take care of themselves. Reassert that it’s not the time to discuss the decision, but simply telling them what is ending and what will be happening next regarding benefits, severance package, HR follow-up, timeline, final paycheck, etc. Focus on delivering everything in a crystal clear manner.

Optional, but often very helpful as a context of care if the person is in the right role, to offer this: 

Tell them if they want to have a conversation, to reach out after they have sorted through their affairs. This saves all the judgment and reasoning for a time when the person has the capacity to be curious and connected.

The whole conversation should be planned to coordinate communications with the remaining team members simultaneously, so that leadership is messaging thoroughly and helping everyone make sense of the decision. I often encourage them to invite people who have questions to find 1 on 1 time with the appropriate leader.

Get ready to get comfortable letting people make their own stories and narratives. It’s not a bad thing, it just happens. Stay honest, stay direct, and be consistent about reiterating important elements of the situation. When you can’t communicate everything, it’s okay to say so. And remember, your messaging should align with company policy to avoid confusion or legal misinterpretation.

The actual communication should be no more than 5-10 minutes. If the person wants to ask questions, reiterate it’s not a conversation. The prep for and the actual internal comms are often very, very important to be rigorous and clear. So don’t neglect the remaining team when preparing for such a difficult communication with the individual being let go.

Important side note: make sure to align the removal of access to systems and getting the company assets back. Sometimes this can be sudden, sometimes it’s stretched out. “With early-stage folks, they often haven’t set any of that up,” Bauman notes. “So I like to mention it so they can begin a practice of good security hygiene.” 

Have the leader communicate to the person being let go that it’s not a sign of a lack of trust in the person, but an important policy that is generalized across anyone who is no longer with the company.

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What to Say: A Script for Firing an Employee

How you handle terminations in your organization, and as a leader, speaks volumes. A well-run employee termination meeting is never just about ending someone’s job. It reflects how you communicate, how you hold boundaries, and how you show up in moments of discomfort.

When it comes time to let someone go, you’re not just delivering a decision. You’re navigating a tangle of bigger questions that likely led up to this moment:

• How do we deal with human emotions at work—both our own and other people’s?
  

• How do we treat people with care and dignity, while also protecting the needs of the whole?
  

• How do we make tough decisions with clarity?
  

• Have we set and communicated clear expectations?
  

• What happens when those expectations aren’t met?

These questions don’t just live in the background. They show up in the room when you’re firing someone—and ideally, they’ve been addressed in a series of conversations in the weeks or months leading up to this conversation. A good script for firing someone doesn’t start with surprise. It starts with a sentence like: “As we’ve been discussing…”

It’s important to give employees clear, direct feedback. Kindness involves being honest and direct, even when it’s difficult. “It may not feel good to tell them this feedback now, but it’s gonna really not be nice to fire somebody without having given them this feedback over a period of time and giving them a chance to change,” notes Heather Jassy, executive coach. 

Once you’re at the point of needing to fire someone, and you’re ready for the script to use during the termination meeting, know first and foremost that this is going to be awkward, and what you’re doing is really painful. You’re delivering bad news, and it’s gonna be uncomfortable for everybody. You have to do it with as much dignity and kindness and directness as possible.  

In an episode of The Reboot Podcast, Jassy reflects on how to begin these difficult conversations when you’re about to fire an employee:

Signal at the onset that it’s going to be a tough conversation, so the person knows what the structure of this conversation might look like. Then deliver the news and be direct: 

“So this is going to be a hard conversation that we’re having today. I want to share some information with you, and then we can discuss it. As you know, I’ve been giving you feedback about X and Y for some time. We’ve been talking about this, and there just hasn’t been enough improvement. We’ve made the decision [choose one: to end your employment here or that your job is ending]. I know this is really hard to hear, and I’m sorry. It’s been a tough decision to make. I really wish there were a different outcome.”

Don’t bury the lead. Now is not the time to talk a whole bunch about, ‘So as you know, we’re making all these changes and I’m going to be promoted and this is happening.’ Once you say to somebody, ‘This is going to be a tough conversation,’ give them the courtesy of addressing the anxiety they’re probably feeling by being really clear and direct about what’s happening.

Ideally, as their manager, you have been talking about this with them for some time. You will not go through a bunch of examples and details, because by this point, it’s of no use talking about those things. What you need to clearly say is: ‘We’ve been talking about this. It hasn’t shifted enough. This decision is final.’ And, there’s an opportunity to be human by acknowledging that ‘I wish this were different. I wish we weren’t here. I know this is hard to hear.’

And this may be the point where the person is very upset.

Listen to the full podcast conversation with Heather Jassy and Ali Schultz:

An important note: In addition to being kind and direct, it’s crucial to be mindful during the termination meeting to avoid any language that could imply wrongful termination or contradict the documentation already in place. Staying consistent with human resources records and company policy helps protect everyone involved.

How to Fire a Toxic or Disruptive Employee

Rehabilitation of poorly performing staff members happens enough times to fool you, to make you think that, if you only tried hard enough, you could have saved this one as well. And so you put it off. And you come up with second and third (and even fourth chances). And, in the meantime, you frustrate and anger the staff around the person.

If you are dealing with a toxic or non-performing employee, sometimes the concern is ‘Who will do their job if they are gone?’ Managers worry that it will be worse without them in their role.

The reality is that they are currently making things harder for the organization by underperforming or being a cause of disruption. When it comes to your culture: It’s better to have a hole in the organization than an asshole.

Got an especially challenging employee situation? Learn how to handle High Conflict Personalities here.

Communicating Terminations to the Team 

After an employee is let go from the organization, the organization and the remaining team members experience a rupture that needs tending to. Jerry Colonna reminds us:

“Remember those folks who thought you so blind to this fellow’s shortcomings? Remember how hard they pressed you (overtly or covertly) to let this person go? The minute you fire the employee, their anger shifts to sympathy and empathy. “How could he fire them? They have two kids!” they say all the while thinking, “Damn. This could happen to me.”

Individuals will have a need to know how this may affect them. The entire organization also has an emotional arc; let them feel what they need to feel. 

It helps to talk about what happened, notes Jerry. 

“Nothing can be more disruptive to a staff than NOT talking about the obvious. And missing employees—even hated fellow workers—are obvious. Gather the staff, explain what happened (You can skip details and be discreet about causation. They’ll all have their own explanations anyway.), and take questions. “Is this evidence of financial problems?” “Who’s going to do their work?” ‘Are more people being fired?” Be prepared to answer all.”

Lastly, he reminds us above all to respect the dignity of the terminated employee. Aside from the moral imperative, it’s good management practice. Remember, everyone is watching every move you make (again, out of sympathy and/or empathy). Go out of your way to make the transition as easy as possible. On many levels, it’s the right thing to do.

Read more of Jerry’s advice for firing well here.

When firing an employee, it’s important to balance empathy with the needs of the entire team and the business. Terminations, while difficult, should be handled with kindness, clarity, and respect, and it requires preparation and ongoing feedback to be done well.