Are we able to sack them?

[Bossingit]

DH has a small company with a few employees. Employee “M” has been employed for six months now and within those six months has used all of his holiday allowance for the year and has had 21 days off work sick (or other reasons). Since being employed to now he’s only been in work 75% of the time on average.

It’s affecting my DH’s work now as it’s only a small team and the unreliability is causing issues with jobs. I have to say these “sick” days are always one or two days here and there and are along the lines of feeling sick, has a fever, covid etc. Never received a doctors note and some have been because his dog has been ill, issues with family…There’s a new excuse every week. He’s had warnings over two occasions where he just didn’t turn up for work and didn’t let anyone know. One occasion was that he overslept and the other was that he was hungover (although he never admitted the second one - we found it out from another employee).

Can we just sack him already? Can we say it’s due to his poor attendance or do we need to say it’s due to a performance issue (which is also true)

Small business owners need to educate themselves on what they need to do. It's not hard to read up on it. Once Dh has checked his contract, calculated notice less overtaken holiday, You can download a letter template. People saying you need HR advice, it might not be necessary if you do everything properly, but you might like the comfort of having what you do approved.

This isn't correct. The employee has been in post less than two years and so can be dismissed without being able to claim against you.

@smartiesneberhadtheanswer - this is not entirely correct, there are exceptions to this if the employer can show some kind of discrimination (I know, I had to make my nanny - with less than 2 years service - redundant after she came back from mat leave and I spent a couple of hours discussing with an employment solicitor to make sure I did everything correctly and didn't leave myself open to a claim).

Typo in below - if employee can show discrimination (am on app and can't edit)

Providing they don’t have a protected characteristic which has been breached -otherwise they can sue from day one.