When is the right time to leave a company and why is it so hard for some employees to see that it’s time (or past time) for them to leave? I’ve met employees that I knew we weren’t going to keep more than a year or two and others that are the textbook definition of deadwood; that is, wood that is been around so long that it’s no longer good for building with or even as firewood. Why is it hard for some employees to detach themselves from a company and others come and go freely? I’ve encountered many kinds over the years but the ones that perplex me the most are the long-term deadwood.

Long-term Deadwood are employees that have been with your company for a long time but stopped making any real contribution years ago. They feel that they have put their time in with the company and that, in turn, the company owes them the job. They aren’t going anywhere unless you drag them out kicking and screaming. Now I’m not being ageist in my approach. I have met many long term (read older) employees that can run circles around me both professionally and technologically. I am talking about people who have lost the understanding that they were hired to do a job and they are accountable for that work. Most times the company has forgotten this as well.

They do have their positives aspects. Since they have been around forever, these people can recount all of the history and who was here back when. They talk of the good old days with a sparkle in their eye reminiscing about the leaders and workers of the past who have retired or moved on. They may also bring the famous banana pudding at the Christmas luncheon every year and proudly hand out the recipe for to anyone who comes near it.

Usually the top management is set against moving them out. The thinking is that we haven’t done anything up to this time so why bother now? They only have a few years til retirement and the banana pudding is pretty good. Why mess with that? These people get moved around from one useless position to another until they marry up with a manager that doesn’t care or is equally useless. While they may add color to your company they have stopped contributing and that can be dangerous. Other employees see management as weak for letting Deadwood Mary come in when she pleases or for letting Deadwood Tom maintain half the workload that everyone else has while productive employees toil away and get 2 to 3 times the work accomplished. The irony is that the terminal deadwood in your company often see themselves as swamped with work and the productive get to hear about it while Deadwood Sue is getting her third cup of coffee in the break room. People start saying “Oh that’s just Sue, she’s been here forever.”

Good managers avoid deadwood employees like the nearsighted fat kid who always got picked last in 4^th grade kickball (screw you Tommy Johnson). Deadwood employee skill sets tend to be outdated, and they don’t want to learn more, and they rarely contribute to the group. Some highly skilled managers can turn around deadwood employees just as some artisans can make lovely lamps or tables out of deadwood found on the beach. Those that cannot are saddled with these employees knowing that management isn’t going to allow them to work them out of the system.  All you can hope for is to snag an opportunity to unload them onto some other unsuspecting manager or hope that they snap at some point and either stop wearing pants to work or accidentally run over someone in the parking lot . The goal is to free up the precious headcount for someone who is more productive.

A good approach is to catch these employees when they are starting to turn into deadwood and either re-motivate them or move them out of the company. Terminal deadwood can clog pipelines and too much of it can give your company a bad reputation causing good employees to bail. Look for signs that employees are starting to rot or go stale. Challenge managers when they start making excuses for employees like this. Remember that deadwood managers breed deadwood employees.

In the end the employees make up the company. The productive ones can make you look good and the deadwood can make you look outdated or irrelevant to others. Take a good look at your workforce and see if there are signs of possible deadwood lying around. Don’t worry, you won’t miss the pudding.