Good news! You already have that right. Just don’t expect to actually *win *in court.
Protected class, my ass. Fire him and give him a month’s severance. He has no recourse whatsoever. IANAL and all that, but it’s really hard for someone to sue you when you give them double the normal severance.
Go through his expenses with a fine tooth comb and you might get lucky to find a cause to fire his ass. This is the one way that generally works to get around the PIP process.
In October 2004, I used to work as an office manager for a real estate firm. Great benefits. I needed to have an emergency surgery. I informed HR, told them we needed a temp, gave them the surgeon’s projected recovery time and informed my direct manager. Surgery went well and was on 6 weeks medical leave.
When I came back, there were rumours amongst the sales staff that they were shutting down our office due to lack of production. I asked my manager for a ‘sit-down’ and we discussed our sales figures. Not stellar, but clearly not in last place for the region. She asked the regional manager to come to our office to discuss our financials and sales figures, to include office expenses and operating costs.
He came, and after a few hours, he gave us our reassurance that there was not only no previous plan to shut our office down, but that as a new(ish) office, our income was just a tad above projected income for our 5-year plan. Job security was implied.
My boss and I then held a meeting with the sales staff. We reassured them that we were not going to be closed and everybody gave a sigh of relief. Just keep selling, people - that’s what you’re here for.
One week later the Regional Manager came back and sat me and my boss down. He said we were closing our office. Finances vs. expenses were mentioned, but this was contrary what he had said last week. And, no, there were no other positions available for either of us within the company.
This was one week before Christmas.
So, not only did he lie to us, but we looked like idiots in front of our sales staff. They all left like rats off a sinking ship.
Not only did getting laid off suck, but the timing was hellish.
How about this one?
Our “regional” manager comes in.
Gives the handful or so employees of our local group an hour or two presentation on how great the company is doing, and how good our division is doing. A real everything is coming up roses presentation.
Two hours later two guys are let go. And they werent bad employees either.
Roses my ass.
Er, no. In the scenario presented (firing someone immediately before they become eligible for a pension, for the purpose of avoiding paying the pension), the employer is stealing labor by not paying part of the agreed compensation therefor. No one has a right to steal. QED.
Ah, you are saying that you believe that there is a right to steal. Interesting ethical framework you got there…
Isn’t that sort of the point of having managers, so that they can help the employees perform better.
If I was CEO of a company, I’d want some sort of documentation that management had tried to work with an employee who was under-performing before I agreed to fire him too.
Well, sure. I guess. I always thought managers were for making sure workers are following the rules and working on what they’re supposed to be working on.
It’s one thing to train someone and give them guidance in performing their job well, but some of these PIPs are pretty disgustingly basic as to be kind of insulting to normal people. I don’t think a company should really have to put an employee on a plan to arrive on time every day to work. That should be expected from day one. If you can’t manage to make it to work on time, well, the employer’s not there to hold your hand. Out you go!
If you’re not completing tasks despite the training they gave you and that has been a part of your job for several years, well then you’re worthless. Out you go!
If you’re a liability to the company, there is likely to be plenty of other willing and more reliable people out there just waiting to take your place. Why prolong the inevitable? Why should some employees require that much more effort from a company to make them valuable employees than others? Just lose the dead weight.
I’m all for protecting employees against labor abuses, but not to the extent that dipshits and losers drag companies down or make them otherwise jump through hoops.
I’ve always seen performance problems as being in a different and more difficult category to manage than more straightforward rule violations like showing up late or goofing off all day. The latter is easy to quantify and document adequately for a termination but the former takes some work from the manager. Ideally there are clauses in their job description like ‘perform with minimal supervision’ that you can use to make a case with if they are taking up more of your time than other employees doing the same or similar jobs do. When someone doesn’t have the knowledge or ability to do their job you can set up a training plan and a goal of increasing productivity or accuracy by a quantifiable amount and if they can’t or won’t improve then you have a good case to take to HR. One of the most important rules is to regularly document the performance of all of your staff and document successes as well as failures so that you don’t appear to be singling out one person for special treatment. No employee should have to wait until their annual evaluation to know that they aren’t meeting expectations.
The problem I see in the OP’s case is, as others have mentioned, is not the HR person but a lousy supervisor.
I’ve been a supervisor for a number of years. When someone doesn’t perform, the key is documentation. Document when you’ve spoken to him of the problem, document your coaching, document everything. If you do that, getting rid of someone isn’t hard.
This is how I understand it. I work in NJ which is an “at will” state, much like PA where I live. From what I understand I could be fired for almost any reason under the sun aside from the obvious things like race, religion etc. I can also leave at any time without consequence. So why is this such an issue? I’ve seen more than my share of people let go at various jobs in two states (again, both “at will”) so I don’t quite get it. Sure, there is always the possibility of a lawsuit but that’s no reason to keep non-productive people around indefinately.
This part about having to fill out paperwork before being protected under the ADA is not true. The employee does need to inform the employer in some way, but that can be in a fairly general statement.
Also, let’s not confuse “at will” and “right to work.” Right to work has to do with unionization and has nothing to do with the issues in this thread.
I agree with those who have said that a manager who doesn’t know what it takes to fire someone for poor performance until he’s 2.5 years into it and wants to do it the day before Christmas is lacking in the HR skills required to be a people manager. Part of being a manager is minimizing the company’s risk in various ways, and managing people means minimizing various legal/ workplace violence risks.
Lets see your boss was not doing his job and now wants to take a short cut and is mad because he can not. A good lawyer can trump a CEO. Sounds like your company has three employees that it need to handle.
And most HR do not know what is going on. My boss was going to terminate a probationary employee and HR insisted that he had to put him on a preformance plan first. Then they called him back the next week to tell him it would be OK to teminate him, problem was he was now past his probation. We did get lucky he quit the next week.
I assume your company is in Northern Virginia (that’s the OP’s location)? Well it was easy as pie for the company I formerly worked for (in N.Va.) to fire me… I was there for 5 years, had consistent excellent reviews, had multiple documents extolling what a “valuable employee” I am, and I got shit-canned without the blink of an eye. Virginia is a “right to work” state which means that you can fire anyone, any time for no reason. And all this talk about fear of legal action is BS because I tried to take legal action and I got nowhere… again, because they can fire anyone, any time, for any reason.