DH been told he might be losing his job - can they do this?

[ShinyAndNew]

He works in a sales based job. The whole department is performing to target, so they have been told that if this does not improve over the next three months they will start finishing people. He needs a sale average of 4 per day. He is only on just over 2 per and cannot envisage getting 4 per day.

He has been with the company for 5 years now, only in the last year in sales as they relocated him after his original department (which still exists) faced cut backs.

Can they just sack him like this? Would he get any pay-offs?

If he loses his job we are screwed. We will lose the house. There is no other way to pay the morgate and no savings available to us. He stupidly refused the payment protection insurance on his morgate as he said they were 'ripping the piss' with the amount they wanted to charge for it.

Is there any help we would be entitled to wrt the morgate?

No direct help on the mortgage unless you have insurance as far as I know. Some mortgage providers allow payment holidays or interest only holidays. You'd obviously need to check out what benefits you might be entitled to too. Also bear in mind that the insurance polices don't often cover dismissal for poor performance or misconduct (see below).

In terms of the job, they are performing to target and talking about dismissing people for poor performance? That sounds a bit odd. They would have to follow a proper performance management process and their targets would have to be broadly fair (i.e. not so unreasonable that a tribunal thought it was all an excuse to dismiss people). It would probably take a few months.

For the time being, I would suggest that he has a direct conversation with his manager, the difficulties he sees in achieving what they want, what support could help him, whether the targets could be reviewed, etc.

well, on what you say, he's not achieving target so they can get rid of him but they need to go through proper process, verbal warning, performance improvement plan and so on first I think.

If he knows his job is at risk he needs to start looking for a new job now. He's got three months so needs to hit the job sites and get his CV out there now. Things are picking up in most places so no need to panic yet. Good luck.

He has been on a performance improvement plan already I think. None of the department are performing to standard. That was a typo.

I don't know if he has had any verbal warnings. He only told me about this last night. I'll get him to check t and c's of morgate tonight.

We are both looking for f/t work atm. It only needs one of us to work f/t to be able to pay the morgate, but without the other working p/t as I do now it would be a struggle.

Don't know about the mortgage but if he is sacked rather than made redundant I doubt it tbh.

In terms of whether they can sack him, assuming the targets are reasonable, they go through a performance management plan and have formal warnings first, then yes eventually they can dismiss him and if it gets to that stage they'd only have to pay him his notice, not any redundancy money or anything else I'm afraid.

it would normallly take a few months as Ribena said. They'd need to try and improve performance with a performance management plan or similar, then give warnings, giving a reasonable amount of time between warnings to improve, going through a verbal and probably two written warnings before dismissing.

I think he is going to ask to be transferred back to his original department - who are looking for new staff according to the job center.

Also bear in mind that if none of the department is performing then they will need to have a reason for choosing to dismiss him (if it comes to that). For example, if he was the lowest performer.

Please check with your Housing Options service at the local authority or CAB for advice about benefits and other schemes that would be available to you if your DH did loose his job, there are a number of schemes, including benefit payments and a scheme where the local authority could buy your home and rent it back to you which might mean that you could stay where you are.