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How To Fire An Employee
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Article 3: Document, Document, Document!
Jerry Oakes once had an employee who started a competitor company within Oakes’ four office walls. The man’s customers called Oakes’ office number, and he used Oakes’ office equipment to create his marketing materials. When Oakes found out, he fired the man on the spot.
The canned employee hauled Oakes before the Texas Workforce Commission for wrongful discharge – and won. Oakes, who runs Synergy Consultants, a small Dallas-area company that takes inventions to market, says ruefully that his mistake was in not formally warning the man that his conduct was unacceptable well before firing him.
Employment law experts advise that even the smallest employers document every policy infraction and how it’s handled – at the time, in writing, signed by the employee.
“Don’t let things fester. Deal with them quickly while the problem is still small,” says Ron Miller, a senior attorney in labor and employment law at Chicago-area legal publisher CCH.
“Let people know what the consequences are for misbehavior and that you don’t tolerate it from anyone. If you document what the employee did, and what you did in response, you’ll have a better defense” if an employee sues you, he says.
Also build a paper trail of signed performance evaluations, notes written after meeting with the employee, customer complaints, and anything else that backs up why you may have to fire the employee.
“It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” notes Miller. “You need to show you are evenhanded to distinguish between what happened with employee A and B.”
He and other experts recommend progressive discipline that gives the employee time to improve performance yet sets out the consequences if positive change doesn’t occur in a set time. You might, for example, start with an oral warning, followed by a written warning, then suspension and finally termination.
That’s what business owner Oakes does now.
“The key is to document from the get-go, giving notices and warnings, and clearly defining the cause of action for which you might be firing them,” he says. Oakes gives the employee at least a month to rectify behavior, then reviews progress at the end.
If the warnings and possibly extra supervision or training have been effective, you once again have an employee whose work you value.
If not, well, the employee can’t say he wasn’t warned.
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How To Fire An Employee
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