Q. I hired a new employee just before quarantine started. Unfortunately I had to let her go last week. She was in an administrative position and it didn't work out. She fell behind on her workload almost immediately and never got up to speed. If we had been together in the...

office we could have found a way to help "Madeline" keep up but working from home, we couldn't. I feel bad but I also know that business requirements come first. On a personal level, did I let Madeline down? I've lost sleep over this.

A. It sounds like you feel bad about the experience but feeling bad doesn't help you, Madeline or your company. Yes, you let Madeline down. You even identified what you withheld from her - the support she would have received from you in the office that you did not invest...

...the time and effort to provide for her once you and she started working from home. You owed her that support. That was a failure on your part.

Starting a new job is always challenging, and with a global pandemic going on we can only imagine what Madeline was going through. Now she's been terminated and told she couldn't pull her weight. Yes, you did let her down and it is appropriate...

...for you to lose sleep over that leadership disaster. If you didn't feel pain, what incentive would you have to learn from this experience?

However badly you feel, Madeline feels much worse. You took away her income and branded her a failure, but she did not fail.

You may have heard the old saying, "When you plant lettuce seeds and they don't grow, you can't blame the lettuce."

You hired Madeline after what I assume was a thorough hiring process. A pandemic and quarantine followed shortly afterward. Your question needed to be, "How can I support Madeline now that her needs are greater, especially since she's still learning the job?"

You delude and console yourself with the mantra, "Business requirements come first." That is a cop-out and you know it. You are smarter than that. You are more human than that.

Business requirements do not come first. People come first. Business requirements are secondary.

What can you learn from this?

You can take responsibility for making every new employee successful. Five months in a new administrative job (under quarantine!) is too early to throw in the towel, especially when you know that the problem is partly or largely based on location.

Once in a great while you will fail in helping a new employer flourish - but not because you both happened to be working from home.

When a new employee washes out after you make every effort to help them, you'll evaluate and refine your interviewing and hiring process.

Think about, journal about and reflect on the pain you are feeling (call it regret, remorse, etc.). I can't expunge whatever guilt you are feeling. If I told you, "That's okay - don't feel bad about it," I would be a very poor coach indeed.

Mother Nature is the best teacher. Pain is one way she delivers her lessons.

Look back. What could you have done differently to help Madeline? Evaluate your on-boarding process. Working onsite vs. at home should not be the factor that causes a newcomer to succeed or fail.

Here are some things you can do for Madeline now:

1. Help her rewrite her resume.
2. Write a LinkedIn recommendation for her. If your company won't allow you to do that because you fired her, reflect on the double damage done to Madeline for no crime whatsoever.
3. Check to make sure she is receiving unemployment benefits.

4. Make introductions for her in your company and with people in your network.
5. Tell her that she did nothing wrong. It was bad timing; you hired her because she is smart and capable, and this rough experience hasn't changed that.
6. Approve a generous severance check.