HOWZAT

As well as getting the legalities right, you have to get the psychology right. Telling people they are surplus to requirements is one of management’s most difficult jobs. Partridge said: “You have to be professional about it and not let emotion get in the way.

“The worst thing you can do is get into arguments about whose fault it is or start making promises you can’t keep. Once the decision has been made, you have to be brave and clinical about it.”

Do managers breaking the bad news have to worry about violence from disgruntled staff?

Tim Johnson, employment law partner at McGrigors, a City law firm, said: “Assaults are infrequent. Anger is not the first emotion. It’s more like the shock of bereavement. The more an employer can do to pave the way and make the news less of a shock, the more likely it is that a claim for unfair dismissal will be avoided.”

But therein lies a problem. Businesses often want to fire staff quickly to minimise the risk of confidential information being passed to competitors.

Johnson said: “It has been known for companies to fill bin bags with staff possessions and drop them out of office windows because they have been so concerned about sabotage.”

The danger with this extreme approach is that it can exacerbate the sense of shock, anger and resentment felt by staff and make trouble even more likely.

“Getting cars back from sacked employees is often tricky,” said Johnson. “You are not allowed to trespass on their property to get them back, so you have to threaten them with the police.”

Most experts agree that firing staff shouldn’t be done in the heat of the moment. It takes planning and co-ordination.

Johnson said: “You have to have sorted out how much you are going to pay them and what you want back from them in terms of mobile phones, laptops and company credit cards.

“Some employers have tissues ready and all the paperwork to hand before they break the news. It sounds harsh, but it is efficient.”

IF PROBATIONERS DON’T MEET EXPECTATIONS, YOU CAN GET RID OF THEM

MARGARET RUTTER, sales manager of a software company that employs 100 staff in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, recently had to sack a senior sales consultant because he had not been pulling his weight.

She said: “It was awful having to do it. He got very upset — sad and tearful. And he had just had a car accident, so I felt even worse. But you can’t let these things affect you. You have to stick to the facts, and the facts were that he hadn’t matched up to any of the expectations we had of him.”

The employee was in the fifth month of a six-month probationary period. Unhappy with his performance, Rutter held a meeting with the sales director and a human-resources consultant to decide what to do. They agreed that his contract should not be renewed and drew up a list of reasons, based on previous informal appraisals. This meant that Rutter had the evidence to back up her decision.

She said: “He’d had five months to show us what he was worth. Why would he change if we kept him on? He had no answer to that.”

The company let the salesman go but paid him until the end of his probationary period.

Rutter is confident that the dismissal was fair and that there are no grounds for him to go to an employment tribunal claiming discrimination.

Links

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development www.cipd.co.uk

Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service www.acas.org.uk

Department of Trade and Industry www.dti.gov.uk