chap left a comment there on one of my youtube videos the other day and he accused me of being
all for the employee and he was obviously an employer because he said what do you do with poor
employees what he actually said is what do you do with heart shape employees but for the sake of
this video we'll describe them as poor employees poor employees can be managed by employers
however there is limited grounds under the unfair dismissals act for terminating and all dismissals
once your 12 months continuous service are presumed to be unfair dismissals unless
unless and this is the key point you can get the dismissal the issue into one of a number
of categories the first one is the capability competence or qualifications of the employee
for performing work of the kind which he was employed by the employer to do this is essentially
the performance ground you can terminate an employee on the grounds of performance
however it can be a slow enough process you do have to give the employee the opportunity
to improve and you do have to give him or whatever training might be required within reason obviously
and you need to give them as i say the time to improve and they need to be clear on the
standards that they're not meeting and given the assistance to meet the standards so that's
the performance related termination and normally that would be preceded well should be preceded by
putting the employee on a performance improvement plan the second category of dismissal that
would be considered to be a fair dismissal would be on the grounds of conduct the conduct of the
employee if the county conduct of the employee is such that the employer can justify a dismissal for
example gross misconduct in those circumstances there's no difficulty with the employer
terminating the employment a third category of fair dismissals fair terminations of an employee
would be on the grounds of redundancy the fact of redundancy redundancy circumstances
would be a defense to any claim for unfair dismissal provided it's a genuine redundancy and
provided the employee has been fairly selected and provided quite frankly that the procedure has been
reasonable and fair and then there's a fourth category in the unfairness races act and
that is any other substantial ground it's not quite clear what any other substantial ground
means but if you're in that category you could be in some difficulty in justifying the
decision there's another category then where the employee or where the employment comes to an end
by reason of some statute or some failure on the employee's behalf to be able to perform the
contract for some lawful reason or some operation of law for example if an employee was jailed then
clearly the contract is going to come to an end because the employee simply cannot perform it
if the employee was a sales rep and it was a condition of the contract that he or she hold
driving license or indeed a lorry driver then clearly if the employee lost the license the
employment could come to an end they are the broad circumstances performance conduct redundancy
they'll be the three big ones where an employer can be justified in terminating the employment
and be able to withstand the claim for unfair dismissal unfair dismissal remember only applies
after an employee has 12 months of continuous employment therefore from an employer's
perspective the employer should really make sure that in the first 12 months of employment
and during the probation period which would probably be six months but could be extendable to
11 or 11 and a half months during that period the employer should really make it his or her business
to source out the employee and ensure that the employee is right for the role in particular
and for the company and so on because within that 12 months period clearly the employee doesn't have
the benefit of the unfair dismissals act 1977 to fall back on and is in a vulnerable position
it is up to the employer during the probation period and during the first five months to
ascertain whether the employee is right or not if the employee is right for the business fair enough
after 12 months then the protection of the statutory or the statute the unfair discussions
like 1977 kicks in and the employee will have strong enough rights under the unfair dismissals
like 1977 but you do have those categories conduct performance redundancy they will all
allow an employer to terminate an employee for one of those reasons i hope you find this video useful
as i say i advise employers and i advise employees and quite frankly i'm a solicitor so i just give
advice i'm not really on one side or the other it doesn't make any difference to me quite frankly
i don't want to seem offhanded or anything but obviously i do this for a living
give advice for a living so if an employer comes to me or if an employee comes to me
then i give them advice it's as simple as that so i don't have any
philosophical or theological favoritism towards employer or employee i deal with
everybody fairly as best i can give them a good service as best i can i give them the best advice
that i can hope you find this video useful if you do i would appreciate if you give it
a thumbs up down below and you may be interested in subscribing to my youtube channel thanks a lot