Episode 369: How to Know When to Fire an Employee, Retrain, or Reassign
By: Bles Benemerito | August 17, 2026 | Increasing Business, Law Firm Marketing, Podcast

In this episode, Molly shares the three-way mis-hire decision that settles when to fire an employee, when to retrain, and when to move a good person into a different seat, and why sitting on a maybe costs your firm more than the call itself.

You’ll learn how to know when to fire an employee instead of retraining them, spot the four deal killers that end the conversation immediately, audit whether your training gave someone a fair system to succeed in, tell a right-person-wrong-seat problem from a bad hire, and run a clean termination meeting that protects your firm.

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Quotes of the Show:
“Sometimes a mis-hire isn’t your most recent hire. It was your very first hire.” – Molly McGrath

Takeaways:

  • Right person, wrong seat is the most common miss.
  • A maybe means you have not gotten curious yet. When you land on maybe, that is your signal to go pull data, the phone logs, the CRM, the training checklist, instead of sitting with a feeling for another quarter.
  • Delegated training with no checklist is not training. Before you accept that someone is not getting it, ask the trainer to walk the process on a whiteboard and print the daily report. Crickets, typically. Then you know the person never had a fair system to succeed in.
  • Four deal killers skip the analysis entirely. Theft, behavior that could create an employment claim, violating client confidentiality, and a drastic character change. No decision tool, no improvement plan. Call your employment lawyer and move.
  • The longest-tenured person on your bus can be the mis-hire. You cannot train an attitude, and the question of when to fire an employee never gets cheaper by waiting. Bring one critical team member into the analysis so you cannot talk yourself out of it. ‌

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