Employee Discipline And How To Fire

Employee discipline is a method for improving problem employee work performance. Its goal is to rehabilitate the problem worker. With this approach, you give warnings of escalating severity and urgency for poor results and behavior. If the worker doesn’t pay attention to the warnings, she uses up her chances. She then gives you no choice but to fire her. In effect, she terminates herself.

Here is the employee discipline procedure:
1) Verbal warning
2) Written warning
3) Final written warning
4) Termination

With this procedure, you give the problem worker 3 chances to get better before you fire her.

You may be asking yourself, “Why do I need to bother with this approach? And why am I trying to ‘fix’ this worker? I just want to terminate this bad apple!”

Let me tell you why.

Here are 3 reasons you should use this approach.

First, a bad apple is a bad apple. So, it’s unlikely a problem worker will shape up enough to survive the procedure. And, if she does, this is great for you … it’s expensive to recruit good workers. The more probable result is the worker ignores your warnings or only barely improves. So, you can lawfully fire.

Second, using employee discipline drastically reduces your chance of a lawsuit. This is the primary motivation for using this approach. With the written warnings, you develop sufficient documentation to justify the termination. Your warnings will document the poor results and misbehavior, tell how the worker should get better and inform her that her job is at risk. And, to be fair, you give her three chances before you terminate her. This is why jurors see this disciplinary method as giving “due process” to the employee.

By using this disciplinary approach, you wipe out any potential legal case. Your ex-worker can’t argue, “My employer was unjust because…
o He never gave me a chance to get better
o He never told me I had a performance issue.
o He never told me that my job was in jeopardy."

With all your documents and warnings, she probably won’t sue you.

Third, this method makes business sense because it lowers your financial exposure. Not only does it reduce your chance of a unfair dismissal suit, but it tells your best workers that they have “due process”. They’ll see there’s a safety net, so if they mess up, they get chances to get better. This means increased job security for the workers. For the employer, it means more contented and more efficient workers.

To discover how to properly terminate a problem employee, let me suggest you get a copy of the Employee Termination Guidebook. It’s gives easy-to-follow procedures and options. To find out more, click employee discipline procedures for terminations.

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