Flower, anyone - please help re difficult employee

[dodgingflu]

You lot helped a lot when I was recruiting our first employee last year, hope you can help now.
So, employee and dh are working together all day everyday. I go in a couple a times a week for paperwork. Always aware that employee is VERY talkative and is, quite frankly, a very boring person. Most of what he discusses is of no interest (computer talk), he has no listening skills, there is no exchange of views, interaction, just him going on and on and on. Realised that dh found him difficult to work with, but have only just realised the extent.
Dh has been very unwell with stress attacks and has had emergency ECG etc this week after a bad episode. Our lives are fairly stressful anyway - we are bringing up one disabled ds and one quite challenging dd and both sides of family take quite a bit of input. Having had a really frank discussion with dh's best friend I realise that dh is very miserable at work, despite the fact he is doing the job he was born to do.
But I also realise that you can't fire someone just because you don't like them. We have talked to our employee about his incessant talking, and I have brought in measures to gauge the amount of work getting done. But I can't just allow the situation to go on and on till dh has a bloody heart attack or something!
I have told employee that we will have to drop him to 3 days a week due to the financial situation which is a lie because the financial situation won't affect us till later this year. However, I believe I can demonstrate a case for doing this now.
I am hoping this will give dh some breathing space.
But how far would you/could you go with this if situation doesn't improve? [Some background facts: employee been with us 10.5 months, he was originally offered 3 days and it increased to 5, he has no dependants (which might make me feel a little less guilty if push comes to shove).
Feel like my question should be - who would you choose, your employee or your dh? Silly question.
Really sorry this is so long. And hate the fact that this makes me feel like a hard bitch.

I'm really sorry dodgingflu but as an employer I can't give you free advice - you would be someone I would want as a client and I can't in all fairness charge my clients for this type of advice if I give it out free to other employers on the internet.

I'm sorry I can't help you more, hope you get it resolved.

Does the employee live alone? It sounds as though he's using work as his social outlet, tbh.

Not that that should be your problem!

No great expert but my basic understanding is that it is relatively easy to 'let an employee go' if they have been employed less than a year. After a year they have more rights and after two even more. This is business and its tough. If he's not a fit he's not a fit. you can't loose your health and your lively hood over not wanting to offend someone. Its not redundancy because that brings in other stuff about employing other people in the same role in the foreseeable future.

Do you have business banking? If so most of the major banks seam to offer some sort of free phone legal business advice. If not business link (business eye in Wales) have lots of help sheets and advice that can point you in the right direction but I (in my learned opinion) think you need to move relatively fast.

Good luck

When you say that your DH and the employee "work together all day everyday" do they actually work together? I.e. does your employee's work impact your DH's work or vice versa? Do they have to be in the same office? Do they need to talk (about work) in the day?

I realise that you have the advantage of less than one year's employment which means that in effect you can do what you want. However, I would say that it is grossly unfair to penalise your employee because of a personality clash.

I think that you would be right to monitor activity, and perhaps look at performance targets in general, so that you can see if his 'chat' is affecting the company.

I think that the best thing to do is to look at ways of giving your DH breathing space without being unfair to the other employee.

I wonder though, on the issue of cutting him to a 3 day week, what the implications would be if business picked up in the future. I would have thought you would have to offer him those hours again before recruiting someone new?

No professional background in HR, I must point out!

Has he been with you for less than a year?

If so he has no employment rights other than if there was discrimination (e.g disability, race) - if there's not, you can get rid of him without him having recourse to an employment tribunal.

You'd have to give him his contractual notice of course.

But surely there is an issue of morality here. Nothing in the OP suggests he is bad at his job, simply annoying.

Not really, this isn't being posted in AIBU it's being posted in employment issues.

Yes, but the issue is that the employee annoys/stresses the OPs DH. Not that he is bad at his job. If the other guy wasn't the OPs husband, would she sack the employee because he annoyed & stressed another worker by chatting? Unlikely. It just isn't fair. And in this economic climate there is no guarantee at all that he could replace that income.

If it was any other situation, the OP would be asking advice about how to deal with an employee who was stressed and sick as a result of working for her. Because the sick party is her DH, she is asking how she can get rid of the employee.

In addition, the employee has been there 10.5 months, so realistically, what you are all saying is "quick, sack him now, because in 6 weeks' time he will have rights and you won't be able to.

To the OP: I understand your concerns, but really do feel that the fairest thing to do is to find a way to limit your DH's time with the other employee without punishing the other employee for your DH's stress. Alongside setting performance criteria to ensure that his chatter is not at detriment to the company itself.

But lack of emotional intelligence - because that's what it is - can affect performance and appears to be doing so in this case.

The OP is worried that it's affecting the employee's productivity.

She and her DH are not a charity, they're a small business.

Changing the employee's behaviour would be difficult and time consuming. If they'd had a longer investment in the employee and his behaviour had recently worsened, fair enough, but effectively he's still on probation with them and needs to prove himself.

I know what I would do in her position, and that would include honest feedback on why he's being let go.

Have you looked at his work and his performance against it? If he is chatting so much is he really do as much work as he could? Have you told him to be quiter, that due to DH's health he needs peace and quiet? Could he be moved to another room/work from home? If you try other things first you may then have an actual case to sack the right way.

Just one other thought - it's clear that interpersonal skills are going to be important in whoever else you employ - either as a replacement for Mr Chatty, or in the future, if you expand.

I'd suggest you put that in future job descriptions and adverts and try to test for it at the recruitment stage perhaps by having paid trial days before committing yourself.

That's not a complete solution - no-one is perfect - but it might give a better idea of personality in future.

Thanks for all your points. Vomitty kid meant I couldn't get back yesterday.
Hope my OP indicated to you all that I am not a hard-nosed bitch - no flounces to those who felt I was being unfair as my Headpart feels the same. Heartpart feels I just want my old happy-go-lucky dh back.
It's a small workshop environment so they are in the same room.
The quality of his work is ok although he does not consistently reach targets in terms of quantity.
If there were 10 people working there, this wouldn't be an issue - there would be enough alternatives to 'dilute' the atmosphere. But this is a small business.
I have held meetings with him to discuss the need for the 'workshop manager' (dh) to be able to carry out admin tasks without disturbance or even read the paper. I have also discussed with him the need to reach targets in his work so that we can take stage payments from customers. (On this, he went off track and started talking about project management software that he could recommend for me to use.) Totally missed the point that I was saying 'we want to charge the customer £1000 for your week's work, but you are only producing £700 worth of work. It is entirely reasonable that £1000 of work could be done on that project in a week. You failed'.
He took the news that he was only required for 3 days very well. In fact, he said he'd rather than work 3 days for us than 5 days for anyone else. Oh God.
Thanks for letting me air. I have a couple of ideas that I'm going to put into practice next week. In the meantime, I'm trying to persuade dh's best friend to take him off to a car show in California to give him a break - we may be able write this to expenses!?!

Did you actually spell out to him what you've written here - "we want to charge the customer £1k for your week's work but you're only producing £700...you failed"?

It sounds as though he needs that spelled out to him if not, with a target set that if he fails to reach it, he's out.

This is a capability issue, and if he's not reaching attainable targets then why would you want to keep him on, especially if he has such an irritating personality?

I would think if he had an irritating personality but was doing brilliantly for your business you and your dh would put up with him.

But whatever you do, don't procrastinate.

Unless you want to get into the minefield of employment legislation, if you're going to get rid of him you're better off doing it before he's been with you for a year.

Good luck!