At the end of last week, a client rang me – she was fed up, she had had enough and needed our help.
One of her employees:
- Had taken excessive amounts of paid and unpaid sick leave without providing any medical certificates and then claimed he was working from home while off sick
- Was aggressive and rude to management and his fellow employees
- Was building apps for his own personal client while at work
- Regularly asked for advances in salary
- Was watching the Super Bowl final at work and then, when asked to switch it off, could not understand why it wasn’t appropriate to just listen to it instead
- Made unauthorised changes to clients’ accounts
- Was regularly late
To name just a few!
Now this client was short of team members at the time and had put up with this behaviour for longer than she should. We terminated him on the grounds of misconduct and not performing his role to the required level
Things to consider:
- Normally at termination the client is required to pay notice (usually 2 weeks) plus any accrued annual leave – but this employee owed the client over $1,600. Our client has decided to wave her entitlement to reimbursement
- The employee had been employed for under 12 months and the business headcount was under 15 so he had no recourse to Unfair Dismissal legislation
What are the benefits?
- The client is relieved as she had been let down so many times and it was very difficult for her to assign work to the employee
- Other members of the team are relieved as they were well aware the employee was taking advantage of their employer (and they had increased workloads covering for his absences)
- The client can now communicate this outcome to the rest of the team, reminding them of her expectations going forward
Whilst firing employees is never fun, it is sometimes necessary and I believe that more employers that find themselves in a similar predicament should take action. No employer should carry under-performing employees.
Need help with terminating employees compliantly writing or reviewing a workplace monitoring and surveillance policy?
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