Sometimes, it’s just easier to cut to the chase and do a deal with an employee to go, rather than put everyone through a protracted and stressful process that nobody wants to go through.
Yes, I know employees have rights and employers have obligations to follow certain laws and processes but both parties are human! Sometimes the employee is a pain in the arse and is playing the system, sometimes the employer is a nightmare and hasn’t handled a situation properly – and sometimes they are both as bad as each other!
I’ll let you in to a secret; even the “good employers” that follow the rules, usually know what outcome that they want before they start a HR process and rarely change their mind. They may just want to cover their backside before they do the deed. Is that fairer? Not necessarily.
I don’t think either party should be forced to a maintain a relationship if they don’t want to. Life is too short. We wouldn’t expect people to do it in their personal lives. It’s like making someone who has fallen out of love with their partner stay with them just because the partner has rights or give the partner 3 to 6 months to make them love them again before they are dumped.
When its broken and highly unlikely to be fixed, I think honesty can be the best policy, as long as you treat your employee humanly. Maybe it really is you, not them, despite the story that you have told yourself.
Before planning a difficult conversation, take legal advice on your situation, find out what the employee is contractually entitled to and what the potential liability is if things go wrong and then make a calculated risk.
Even if the potential risk of a claim against you and the value of such a claim is high, you might still feel that it’s worth ending someone’s employment because of the detrimental impact that continuing to employ them is having on your business.
If your employee is in their probationary period, you’ve got evidence of persistent poor performance (even if you haven’t gone through a formal capability procedure), they have a bad attitude to learning and there are no discriminatory factors affecting your decision, you might decide that it’s time to give them notice to go.
But if that employee has more than two years’ continuous service, they have raised a grievance citing bullying and harassment by their manager and they have a disability that affects their ability to do their job, you are going to have to handle that situation more carefully – or raid the piggy bank!
Certain types of claim have a cap on the maximum compensation payable and you might find that it’s worth offering them that amount just to go.
If you are offering an employee an exit package, you may want to tie up the terms in a Settlement Agreement. This is a legally binding agreement that settles all claims against you arising from an employee’s employment or its termination.
As well as the financial terms, you can also agree provisions with regard to confidentiality, restrictive covenants, references, announcements, company property, handover and no derogatory statements. We regularly help employers in this situation so if you want to book a consultation with one of our legal team to discuss your options, work out your figures, script your conversation and draft a settlement agreement for you, all for a fixed fee of £1000 plus VAT, contact us today
