Why is it so hard to fire someone in some organisations?

[Merryoldgoat]

Now I am someone who thinks it’s important to have fair hiring practices and maintaining a professional work environment.

However my DH has been having an utter nightmare with one of his team members and HR have made him go through an unbelievable amount of rigmarole to just get to the point where they are about to offer him money to go.

The guy has been less than two years.

A few examples of what he’s done

Lied to my husband’s face about when he started work multiple times

Missed deadlines after reassuring DH he’d ’nearly finished’

Going AWOL and refusing to answer messages or calls

Inappropriate use of sick leave and annual leave

Saying he’ll attend meetings and not turning up

At least 5 occasions where he claims to have emailed or messaged DH on Teams but ‘it didn’t send’

Never on time after already agreeing a later start time than everyone else in the team.

Every time DH has tried to address firmly HR have said they need to offer more support and it’s not reached the stage where they can let go.

They are now going to probably pay him 4-6 months pay which seems mad given he’s clearly not capable of the job.

It makes zero sense to me - if you work in HR can you explain this?

For context DH works for a university - I don’t know if that makes a difference.

I’d have been able to dismiss this person months ago if they worked for me.

Going AWOL, ignoring all contact for two days and the putting in retrospective request for annual leave - that kind of thing.

Fingers crossed, eh? Clearly a completely unique situation.

There's a teacher at primary school for three years running she's gone on the sick late autumn not returning until after Easter. It's so unfair on the children who have agency staff when she is absent. Apparently nothing can be done.

We had a lot of that too. Sometimes it would be refused and they'd quite happily have it unpaid.

We do get rid of people but always pay them off, which seems really unfair! You behave so badly you effectively get fired only with 9 months pay and a reference. Meanwhile everyone else works hard and gets a measly 3% payrise. Very demotivating.

Sounds like a combination of ineffective leadership at the top in creating a culture of performance, combined with overcomplex disciplinary/performance management procedures and risk averse HR (probably reflecting a generally risk averse senior management approach to people issues).

With less than 2 years service the fear will be of an ET with an alleged disability or other discrimination reason popping out of the woodwork. HRBP may also be inexperienced or risk averse relating to dismissals and possibly hasn't sought or isn't receiving good advice from their seniors. If employee is being represented by the trade union that will also increase management/HR risk averseness and so slow things down too. Even much more experienced, proactive HR people (I like to think I am one) can find it difficult to overcome a prevailing culture.

It is common in Higher Education, partly because dismissing academics is really difficult and often enshrined in very old Statues or Articles of Association especially for the older pre-1992 Institutions . This then often carries over into the disciplinary policies and procedures for professional services staff

Some posters will tout how much better the private sector is at this sort of thing but it's actually not always the case. The private sector can be just as risk averse the difference is they often throw settlement money at even simple dismissal cases. But many are just as slow to go down that path. I worked for one of the Big Four accounting firms and even dismissing at probation was quite clunky.

Your husband needs to be challenging the advice and speed of approach, and asking for more HR senior involvement if necessary. He should also make sure he has his own line manager and head of department/SLT member on board. If it is a risk averse culture he can't really fight against that as it will be a brick wall.

Does he get the job done? Which is all that matters. And is there enough work for him to do.

So? Unless he's a teacher or a nurse or a police officer or something that matters.

If it's a pointless office job flogging goods, what does it matter.

Or if he's any public service and wasting taxpayers' money.

Another HR person here saying it’s the sector.

Private sector he would be long gone. Especially with less than two years service and assuming no protected characteristics. Education - more risk adverse so..

lol no - not even slightly 🤣

Thank you very much for this. This is a vert good summary of what I suspect the situation is.

I know DH’s manager is involved now so perhaps things will move forward.

You think it’s ok to just not turn up to work with no notice and not inform anyone and not answer any messages?

I am self-employed so don't need to deal with colleagues like that. DH is employed in an organisation which is JUST like that though and it's because they are scared of being sued - even if the employee has no case to answer they can drag it out for months. Also the fear of adverse publicity - CF employee goes to the papers doing a sadface story about being sacked for no reason. Yes the paper has to print a retraction if they get it wrong but by then the damage is done. Also things can blow up on social media. HR are therefore shit scared of getting rid of anyone.

A few years ago DH had a contractor - so not even a full time employee, someone on a month to month contract - who HR said not to sack even though he was caught twice stealing from the canteen.

Unfortunately this kind of attitude is rife in the university sector, I worked in universities for 10 years and have worked with/ come across so many people who behave like this (including one of my old team members who once took the entire month of February off and went incommunicado)!! Universities seem to be terrified of any threat of legal action/ employment tribunals and with lots of colleagues in unions (I have absolutely nothing against this and the union supported me hugely when my old job was made redundant) and so unfortunately , a soft approach to people not pulling their weight seems to be the norm!

If you think this is bad don't ever work for the NHS. It makes me laugh when people say there are too many managers in the NHS. There are certainly too many inexperienced, over promoted, overpaid corporate managers, especially in HR, and quite a few clinical ones too. It's a bloody miracle Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay, Alder Hey, Nottingham and the rest ever got into the public domain to be honest and those whistleblowers have really suffered for it. You practically have to kill someone in the NHS to get fired and even then it's more likely clinicians will close ranks and the offender will get not only moved but promoted.

I've raised concerns recently in my own organisation and have mysteriously had a personalised letter in the last couple of days
asking if I'm interested in the early "mutually agreed" not-redundancy-at-all scheme. Nobody else I've asked has had a similar letter. Our HR are so unfamiliar with English employment law they don't seem to realise how useful this could be if it progresses to tribunal which is looking more likely every day.

HR are not your friends, they will do ANYTHING to protect the reputation of the organisation even when it's well known what a massive pig's ear everything is.

How is it inappropriate to discuss work issues with your spouse?

If your DH doesn't understand this very basic tenet of professionalism, I'd be taking all he says about his underperforming subordinate with a grain of salt, frankly.

It’s just bonkers.

I work for a much smaller organisation of around 100 staff so appreciate it’s not as bureaucratic, but this just could not fly for us.

And we are very generous with leave, special circumstances etc. Just because you want to be a good, fair, and kind employer it doesn’t meant you need to allow this abject shit.

It must be awful to work in a team with someone like them.

👍🏽

And your partner could be sacked for breaching confidentially by sharing with you notes about a colleague which relate to appraisals of this person's work, complains to HR and so on.

This should be kept on his work computer and shared only with relevant people at work, not discussed/shared at home with you.

That employee might be useless and the company should have dealt with them a long time ago but your husband also need to learn to avoid breaching company policy...

You also are doing him no favour by posting this thread. Of course it is anonymous but someone could still work out who the people involved are by the details you have given.

Sorry for bringing this up. Is he of a different religion/race? Some employers are scared that they would have the race card played at if they sacked him.

I can think of a few examples where the employee is only there because of them being non white. If a white employee did that - P45 in process

How do you know what his work policies state?

No. He’s white. DH is white.

Yup, same in the NHS. In fact useless people typically get promoted out of their roles rather than fired. That way they become ‘someone else’s’ problem.

In my experience of the public sector they just moved people sideways over and over again. So annoying. Some lazy skiving people had a career until retirement when they should have been sacked.