Do you have fewer employment rights within the first year?

[PeachesMcLean]

A member of staff has been with us 7 months and passed her 6 month probation. Her line manager left two weeks ago and signed off the probation because he didn't care, but did highlight problems around performance and attendance. I'm now managing that person and her performance is truly dreadful. Regularly missing days and hardly doing any work when in the office. Doesn't have any relevant experience to do the job and shouldn't have been employed. The contract says a month's notice either way. HR are pretty weak in our branch and are still advising me to take the slowly slowly approach of addressing the issues informally, which I'm doing, before starting disciplinary procedures.

Soo frustrating, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking it needs to be sorted before a year's employment has passed. Have I imagined this??? If the probation has been passed, does this make any difference?

If this person is damaging your business then you need to start the formal process so you can rectify the situation.

I am not sure what the deal is on how long someone has been working for you but if you have passed her probationary period I would have thought you were into the formal bit...

You have very few rights until a year. Probationary periods have no meaning in law, it's just a handy mechanism for the employer. The employee only has unfair dismissal rights within the first year if some kind of discrimination is involved basically.

You can do the softly softly approach if you like, but if you think you'll end up dismissing the person, do not let it go much longer.

Thanks both. Yes, she is damaging the business, she's got a responsible job and shouldn't have been appointed.

Flowery, thanks. So we could be in a position to just give her a month's notice? I'd want to give her another chance - she was fairly honest about her experience when she was appointed but isn't even taking any notice of the training opportunities I suggest. She does have a youngish family, but there's only so much lost income we can cope with.

Yes absolutely, you can just sack her at this point, with whatever notice she is entitled to.

You can certainly give her another chance, I'd suggest you have a very straight-talking conversation with her, make sure she is very clear about the expectations you have of her, make sure she is aware of the seriousness of the position she has put herself in, what she needs to do to rectify that situation and what will happen if she doesn't. Offer her any support she needs, and make sure there are no issues that might be affecting her performance that you are unaware of and set a very tight timescale to see improvements.

You can do softly softly but you have to weigh up the effects on the business and the rest of the team, plus the short timescale you are on before it becomes a lot lot more difficult and time consuming to get rid of her if that's where you're headed.

Thanks.

Quite frightening really - I'm in my first year there myself.

Better behave yourself then

Peaches.

Just a warning point. If you dismiss in week 51 of employment, that counts as a year's service. I think that the deadline you need to have in your mind is 11 months. That way there's time to factor in any delays (e.g. employee off sick the day you were going to speak to her, etc) and you don't risk slipping up by a day or two.

Pants. Head office HR are advising softly softly. Start with the informal conversation, set objectives, then go down disciplinary route if necessarily. I asked about rights as discussed here - they said that at this stage (we're at 9 months not 7 as I thought) we're effectively too late.

So I've now inherited someone else's failure to recruit properly or manage properly. Great.

You never know....when she realises she is being managed carefully she may well do one of two things:

1. Find another job and leave
2. Realise the seriousness and pull her socks up!

I know, fingers crossed for the first one. I don't hold out much hope for the second. with the best will in the world, she has no experience in the field - I'm astonished she was appointed. Without disclosing too much about her background, it would be like appointing a nurse to do the job of a teacher. I really don't know how it came about.

Peaches I hate to advise someone to go against the advice of HR, obviously . But assuming this person's on one month's notice, it isn't too late if you act now.

HR won't have the ability to authorise or not authorise someone's dismissal, and their advice is just that, advice, and a recommendation of what they consider the best way to act. What does your boss say? Talk to whoever has the power, put forward your opinion, good supporting information about this person's complete lack of suitability for the job and talk a lot about how much management time it would take to go through a long performance management process followed by disciplinary procedures and appeals.

Plus costs. Costs of management time, costs of lack of productivity of this person, costs of mistakes she will make, costs of your time having to keep monitoring what she is doing and correcting it, or whatever. Costs of additional training she will need. I could go on...

Thanks flowery. I know you're right and I do want to take it further if I can, but my actual boss, the person with the power, is on long term sick and we've just been given an acting manager who's seconded from head office. She's big and scary and is sorting out Major issues with the way we're run. I know this is important but there's even bigger stuff happening. However, I should get the chance to talk about it on Friday with her. Thanks for assuring me I'm doing the right thing though. I really don't want to just leave it there.

Another route to consider might be redeployment.

Would there be another department/role that she might be better suited to?

You can dismiss without good reason if the person has less than a year (taking notice period into account. You don't have to follow procedure as they can't claim unfair dismissal - however this wouldn't be deemed as best practice or even fair.

Take a commercial view, if she is unlikely to fulfil the requirements of the role, cut your losses - pay her a months notice and ask her to leave immediately. Not very nice but probably cost effective in the long run - if you can live with that on your mind.

If you think she has potential to improve with support/training and you have the luxury of time and money then do that.

Only do the first option if there is no evidence that would support any form of discrimination as rights for that start from the time the job is advertised