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Employee Terminations

First, you need a sound company policy foundation. This means:

  • Accurate, meaningful job descriptions. This establishes the essential expectations of every employee from the lowest paid to the largest responsible position in your organization. It lays out in as much detail as possible those most impo rtant job duties required to retain continued employment and for consideration of promotions, wage increases and other work related benefits. In any event, a job description can be part of a successful legal defense by showing an ex-employee's attorney or possible jury that the fired "D" performer did in fact know what to do from the very beginning.
     
  • Complete, detailed position training checklist. No training program works without a checklist or procedural outline. Without such a tool, training details could be left out for new employees and could become an ex-employee's excuse for not performing required tasks. In addition, good training, and the corresponding acknowledgment of it (have employees sign off on each area trained and date each item completed), could prepare new employees to perform better in the first place. Keep in mind, if you don't train, don't blame!
     
  • Timely, consistent & meaningful performance appraisals. Want to see an ex-employee attorney's eyes light up? Allow a termination to take place without any performance appraisals or to terminate for reasons inconsistent with the appraisal verbiage. Without appraisals, a jury will conclude that you haven't been "fair" in directing errant employees away from disasters of their own making. They may feel that due to your lack of direction, you have accepted their performance shortfalls. The jury may find that you owed more communication to your employees in between "you're hired" and "you're fired!" The real legal fun starts when managers do give performance appraisals and give out praise only to fire someone for the same reasons. Juries don't like inconsistencies.
     
  • A well-thought-out employee handbook or manual. This will:
    •  Clarify company policies before they're an issue.
    •  Save time answering the same questions over and over.
    •  Provide written documentation of policies in case of disputes.
    •  Possibly dissuade disgruntled-terminated employees and their attorneys from pesky expensive law suits.

Now given that foundation, learn how the termination process should work.  Next Page...