Would You Quit Over This? (work advice)

[Cort Haus]

Vet, get a job first before quitting this one. It's boring advice when you just want to get out, but in this climate it has to be good advice.

[notyoueither]

You sacked someone without evidence, or did you just lose the evidence?!? I assume you wouldn't have put those as the reasons for dismissal.

There was a major confrontation over standards for work being done. This was after several discussions on the same topic over a period of months. The employee simply refused to do the work in an acceptable way. None of it was documented though. I do not sit people down, tell them they've been a bad puppy, and ask them to sign at the bottom about it.

The next day the employee was 'sick.'

Another employee discovered some work related files gone from a work station they shared. A significant amount of relatively low value items were found in the trash.

Working products of the sort we sell and repair were found squirreled away at the bottom of storage for packaging materials.

When the person came in, late, the next day I called him aside and let him know he was done and sent him home. He got his final pay the next day, but no severance as I considered that I had terminated him 'with cause.'

He went to the labour board and in due course they contacted me. I explained my side of it, but the representative of the labour board wanted witnesses or recordings of the misconduct. They issued an order that I pay the employee two weeks severance, with the provision that I could appeal and ask for a hearing. When filing for the hearing they required that the amount in dispute be paid to them in trust and the amount would be disbursed according to the result of the hearing. I filed for the hearing and paid the amount in dispute (two weeks pay).

Before the hearing I came to the conclusion that I would side with the employee if I were in the place of the person running the hearing, so I dropped it and let the employee have his severance without arguing it.

The lesson learned is that employees will get their severance unless all the i's are dotted and t's crossed, which is fine by me. There are a lot of scum bags who try to take advantage of people who live pay cheque to pay cheque. I agree with how the labour board did things.

[Asher]

We had to fire a co-op student, as he was so unbelievably terrible. Even though he was only on a 4-month term, we had to jump through a lot of hoops to ensure we'd not get in **** for it.

We DID sit him down in THREE different meetings at the end of THREE weeks. In each meeting we'd set out goals for him for the next week, which he signed. They were all more than reasonable. Then the next week, they were never met. We'd go through it all again, he'd sign he did not meet the goals and then it outlined the goals for next week.

By the third week, we'd fired him. We had ample documentation that he was not meeting expectations and was at fault. And this is within his first two months of employment, which is really "at-will" employment.

But because he was a co-op student and we had an agreement with his school, we had to be quite careful.

In the end, we fired him but he tearfully begged to work pro-bono (true story). He's an Asian immigrant kid who is utterly terrified of disappointing his parents, and if he stopped coming in to work they'd know he'd get canned.

[onodera]

Don't you have an internal movement policy in your bank? In the bank I work in, such transfers are done through HR. Your new boss goes to them, approves your transfer and you're good to go, unless your old boss goes to the BOM and convinces them to annull your transfer.

Btw, am I reading that correctly that in the US you can fire an employee at will and only pay him a 2 weeks' worth severance package? In Russia, you can do no such thing. You can either lay someone off (and that means paying two monthly salaries), or you can fire someone for work-related misconduct, which is a bad thing to have in your employment history book.
Of course, there are ways around that.
1. Some employers simply force their new employees to write a two-weeks notice with a blank date before they hire them. Should the need arise, they fill in the date and send it to the HR.
2. Some employers simply offer one probation period after the other, never letting anyone join the staff.
3. The simplest way is of course, asking the person to quit, indicating that otherwise they won't enjoy their job anymore.
4. If the employee refuses to quit, finding enough misconducts is not that hard. Being late for work is the easiest one. At 9:15 you call the HR and tell them the guy is absent. They come by, register that and when he turns up at 9:20 with no explanation (and the only explanation they'll accept is from one of the government offices: the police, a hospital, the transit authorities), you get a strike. Three strikes, and you're out with a big ugly blue stamp in your employment history book, which will signal to any potential employer, "BEWARE, IF YOU TRY TO FIRE HIM, HE'LL BE A DICK. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HIRE THAT GUY NOW?"

[VetLegion]

Ah, the wonders of communism. We also have those "employment booklets" which are a kind of portable dossier, a completely unnecessary and insulting piece of bureaucracy. You will not be surprised to learn that such things don't exist in the free world.

[KrazyHorse]

Btw, am I reading that correctly that in the US you can fire an employee at will and only pay him a 2 weeks' worth severance package? In Russia, you can do no such thing. You can either lay someone off (and that means paying two monthly salaries), or you can fire someone for work-related misconduct, which is a bad thing to have in your employment history book.

No, you can fire somebody in most states in the US for any reason or no reason at all and not pay them ANY severance.

[KrazyHorse]

at silly Euros being shocked at this

[KrazyHorse]

"employment book"

[notyoueither]

Btw, am I reading that correctly that in the US you can fire an employee at will and only pay him a 2 weeks' worth severance package? In Russia, you can do no such thing. You can either lay someone off (and that means paying two monthly salaries), or you can fire someone for work-related misconduct, which is a bad thing to have in your employment history book.

Most of the discussion has been about Canada and Alberta.

In Alberta the severance period goes up with years employed. After twenty years it's quite a bit.

Anyone can be fired with no notice and no severance during the first ninety days, no reason is required. That is probation, and it cannot be extended.

There is no way in hell we'd get away with the first two things you mentioned and the fourth is a non-starter, period. The third is monumentally stupid unless you are used to having workers trying to make your venture fail.

[onodera]

"employment book"

How do you prove your employment history, then?

[Asher]

References

[VetLegion]

Why in hell would you need to prove anything? You're innocent by default, not guilty!

Shake out of it onodera!

I'm happy to report that "employment booklets" are being abolished in Croatia. The
latest changes in the labour law saw them removed.

[KrazyHorse]

You provide references if requested.

[Flubber]

The lesson learned is that employees will get their severance unless all the i's are dotted and t's crossed, .

QFT

Bopttom line is that the burden on an employer to terminate "for cause" is not 'beyond all reasonable doubt" but it is pretty close. You need evidence and in the case of simply poor performance or minor misconduct, you would have to show you followed steps through progressive discipline. To terminate for cause generally requires either something you can call major misconduct (assaulting someone as one example) or documented discipline for prior minor misconduct which is repeated.

Its a tough standard but like NYE I have no problem with it. The employee gets paid theuir notice unless they were pretty terrible--

[Flubber]

AS for employees giving notice. . . . I always thought it was reasonable to give notice.

I don't think the law is ever really enforced since the worker can be "sick" or whatever and as others have said -- the employer might want to be rid of someone ASAP anyway

When I quit my last job in NL before moving to Alberta, I gave 3 months notice ( I needed to sell my house anyway) This allowed them to do a search and allow me to train my replacement for two weeks. My employer quite appreciated my help and it meant I have a wonderful relationship with those folks to this day