A caveat: Don't do it on a Friday

Terminating someone right before the weekend only gives them time to stew -- or to do significant damage to your systems while nearly everyone else is out of the office.

Stefan points out the advantage of firing someone on Monday morning: You'll have the weekend to do any necessary prep work -- backing up files, finding and closing back doors in a network, cutting off access to assorted networks -- without too many people around to notice that something's about to happen. By preparing on the weekend and terminating an employee Monday morning, you're reducing the chance that the rest of the working week will be devoted to containing any fallout from the firing, he says.

However, Lanzalotto thinks starting off the work week by firing someone can reduce an organization's output: "Do you want people to be productive all week or to talk about this all week?"

While Monday may or may not be an ideal day, Lanzalotto does agree that terminating someone is best done earlier in the week -- and certainly not on a Friday.

Step 4: Deal with the survivors

The unpleasant part of the task may be over, but the post-firing fallout isn't confined to the IT concerns. Workers may be nervous or unsettled, and managers need to act quickly to defuse that tension.

"Be as open as possible within company culture," says Monroe. "If you can make it clear that it was not an arbitrary decision made randomly, that takes away a lot of concern that comes along with it."

It also improves the likelihood that a dysfunctional office can right itself more quickly. Monroe says that most of the time, if someone's being fired for performance issues, it's not a surprise to their coworkers. After he received a standing ovation from his department following his firing of a troublesome employee, Monroe realized that the person who is causing the manager headaches is usually afflicting their coworkers, too.