Job analysis, job descriptions, and interview questions
True story, I once received a call from a small business owner, who literally wanted to hire me to help him fire an employee. He didn't want to do it, so he was looking for someone else to do it on his behalf. When I asked why he wanted to fire this employee, the owner said the employee wasn't meeting his expectations. When I asked the owner how he communicated his expectations to this employee, the owner didn't have an answer. Turned out, he hadn't communicated them at all. I convinced the owner to hire me to write job descriptions, and help him set expectations.
We agreed that if after all of that, the employee still wasn't doing well, I would indeed take on the responsibility of firing that employee, and you know what, I never had to. I started my process with a job analysis. Even if you're not starting from scratch, like I was, analysis are important because I promise, you don't know everything there is to know about all of the jobs in your organization. That means, for example, you can't hire into open positions as well as you could.Source: