Owning a business is no simple feat. You have to deal with maintaining a continuous, focused balance between the quality of service you provide and maintaining good relationships with customers while working on acquiring new ones. Then, of course, there’s the very machine that drives your company: your employees.
Even with careful reviews and selection processes before hiring a new staff member, sometimes situations arise where said employee’s behaviour was in direct contravention to company policy. Alternatively, it caused such a sudden and intense disruption that decisions were made to terminate their employment immediately.
Whether the decision was on justified grounds or not, sometimes there will be a disgruntled employee striking back at you and demanding payout for unfair dismissal. There are several cases to reference where companies were forced to provide compensation after the release of an employee was found to be unfair.
Here’s how to reduce the chances of this happening to your business.
Be Sure To Understand The Situation From All Sides
If an employee fails to live up to their role or acts in a way that requires reprimand, be sure to take reasonable action before considering dismissal. This includes discussing the situation with the employee and clearly explaining what is required of them. Also, tend to their concerns and show that you care about their wellbeing as an employee. Sometimes there are less obvious, underlying causes for their behaviour and knowing about these will aid you in making appropriate decisions. Forming a relationship based on trust and mutual respect will also improve their work ethic while reducing the chances of things turning ugly later down the line.
Provide Sufficient, Warranted Intervention And Warnings
Always ensure that you have a concrete historical timeline of when incidents occurred and that a warning was issued to the employee, clearly stating the reason for being reprimanded. Ensure that you have sufficient documentation to prove that you have done all you could to salvage and support your employer/employee relationship.”if it’s not written down it didn’t happen”
Remember that a compassionate approach and intervention at first will be far better received than immediately lashing out against the employee. Steadily increase the level of urgency and clarify what the problem areas are if they recur.
Lastly, remember that your employees are people. The longer they work for you, the more they will expect their loyalty and time to be appreciated, and their concerns heard. Scale your response and approach accordingly, and maintain objective reasonability at all times if you want to prevent payout for unfair dismissal claims in future.
Are you looking for HR solution that you can depend on? Contact Fresh HR Insights today for the ultimate preventative solution. You can also check out our – 9 Burning HR Questions Answered https://freshhrinsights.com.au/product/top-9-burning-hr-questions-answered/ for the answer to some of the key areas our clients often ask us about.