As an employer, there will be times when you would have to make the difficult choice of terminating employees. Once you have made such a decision, you will need to take all the steps following the decision legally and ethically to avoid a bad representation of your company. Let’s take a look at all the steps in detail:
Consult The Employer’s Contract
Most US states allow employers to fire employees ‘at-will.’ However, due to this particular benefit to employers, many employees ask for a contract these days. Employees at senior positions or with specialized skill sets can especially ask for one when joining.
If the employee you decided to terminate has signed a contract, you wouldn’t be able to remove them. To fire employees who have signed a contract, you would have no choice but to wait for their agreement to be over.
Review Company Policies
For all employees, and this may come in handy for employees on contracts, too, you would need to look through the company policies of your organization regarding terminating employees. It might contain a policy under which you can terminate employees on contract.
While you would already have a valid reason to terminate employees, it would greatly help your company’s image if you could look for employee behaviors that the company doesn’t tolerate and validate your reasoning for firing employees.
Document Violations
Even if you have decided to terminate employees, take a step back and gather the record of their ill-conduct at work. There would be a chance your employee may not know about the work rule they are breaking if you didn’t inform them of company policies while onboarding.
In such a case, you can send out updated company policies to all employees and issue a warning to employees you want to terminate.
Investigate Violations
Once you have recorded your employees’ ill-conduct, you can issue them a warning or open an investigation about their actions to fire them. This step will help you avoid any legal actions from the employees. Your case about firing them will be strong, and your company’s image will stay intact. As the documents support the investigation, your work will become easier.
Be Brief about Termination
Once the investigation closes and gives you a green signal to fire employees, you should inform them of their termination. Be clear, specific, and brief in this discussion.
You don’t want to sweeten your words and make them misunderstand your purpose. Let them know that they will no longer work for your company and why it came to that.
Fulfill Legal Obligations
While employers are allowed by most states to fire employees’ at-will, the right comes with various obligations. To avoid lawsuits regarding wrongful termination, you would need to fulfill all the legal obligations required of you.
Pay the terminated employee their last paycheck, give them all the information about their insurance and retirement savings accounts, and help them file for unemployment as you let them go.
Finally, don’t forget to consult a business attorney when formulating company policies regarding the termination of employees. You can save a lot of legal trouble by being cautious and ethical.
