Top 5 Documents to Prepare for Termination: Employee Management

Work Out the Kinks of Firing Before You Pull the Trigger By Alison E. Howard Firing an employee is a common business scenario. An employee is implicated in a singular episode or series of incidents that violate company policy and you have to terminate employment without causing further liability to your organization. Whether firing an employee chu s your stomach or excites you, your responsibility is to minimize the risk of litigation. The process of documentation is the best way to protect against lawsuits for wrongful dismissal or defamation. These are the top five documents you need to keep on record to save you from potential legal backlash. Employee Handbooks An employee handbook is a practical document with many useful benefits. It empowers your staff to manage themselves more autonomously whenever a question pops up about company policies, saving you time and hassle on training. More poignantly an employee handbook protects your organization from a range of legal liabilities. The honeymoon phase at the start of the job is not so different from a typical romantic relationship, energizing and draining all at once, full of high hopes and best behavior from both parties. The employer is willing to accommodate the newcomer’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. The newcomer tries very hard to assimilate and outperform to seek approval from his or her beloved. Even the most ardent sticklers for procedure don’t like to sully this golden time with uncomfortable formalities like company policy. Similar in spirit to a prenuptial agreement, employee handbooks help you set expectations for your employees. Make sure your document is properly detailed. Clarity will save you red tape and legality issues in times of trouble. To make sure nothing of importance is omitted, use a pre-drafted template that you can customize like Biztree Business-in-a-Box. Valid reasons for firing should be clearly defined in your policy manual. Protect your organization. Use your employee handbook to set a benchmark for behavior and specifically delineate what constitutes gross misconduct and policy violation. Employee Evaluations The regular administration of performance evaluations is another important pre-emptive practice for safeguarding against legal action. Essentially you’re formally logging justifications to fire someone. According to a US study conducted in 2010 by WorldAtWork and Sibson Consulting 91% of companies have an official performance management review system. However over 50% of employees and managers despise the confrontational nature of performance reviews. From a legality standpoint, assessment reviews build your case against poor performers, therefore we recommend embracing it full throttle as a necessary evil. How can you improve an intrinsically flawed system? Do it more often. Increasing the frequency of your evaluations will yield higher performance improvements. You will be able to track your staff’s performance at a more granular level, and monthly or quarterly reviews won’t have the same shock value as those that only happen once or twice a year. Establish a set of goals and a time-frame for achievement. Use company-wide objectives as a basis, drill down each goal to a set of tasks and actions within the parameters of the job description. Apply qualitative and quantitative measures to review performance. Follow up at regular intervals to determine how effectively an employee reaches the targets that have been set. There are ways to simplify the process. Work with modifiable evaluation templates. Go the self-evaluation route, the most popular approach adopted by 72% of companies. Bottom-line, you need to document your attempts to help the employee in question improve. Employment Contracts Build an ‘out’ clause or termination clause directly into your employment contract, keeping in mind employment law varies by state. Take advantage of pre-written contracts like http://www.biztree.com/download/. To protect yourself against defamation lawsuits launched by bitter former employees, make sure your employment contract clearly stipulates your employee’s privacy will be upheld and any comments will be objective and indisputable facts like dates of employment should the contract come to termination. Job Applications The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports over 50% of applicants lie on their resume, some quite outrageously. Before your candidate waltzes through your door, before you open your floodgates to the influx of resumes, revise your job application form to include a legal disclaimer stipulating the consequence of lying or misrepresenting qualifications, education and employment history. Reference Checks Checking references is the best a priori approach to protecting your company from employee misrepresentation. The SHRM estimates 76% of employers conduct reference checks, excluding criminal or credit checks. 22% perform checks on selected candidates. Only 2% never verify candidate information. Reference checks save you from getting egg on your face as you come to conclusions experientially that could have been discovered in a couple of phone calls. References will reveal soft facts about your potential new hire that are impossible to divine from the content of a resume. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. –Benjamin Franklin