Termination or Probation. Which would you do??
Mary Poppins
13 Posts
Scenerio: Head of a certain dept. has been with the company six months (our probationary period is six months). During this time, HR has had complaints from three employees of verbal abuse and harrassment from head of the dept. (two men, one woman) The woman quit, a meeting was held with the head of the dept. and one of the men to air differences of opinion, etc. So far, things are ok there. The third employee, a man, was going to be terminated for poor performance and claimed harassment at the time he knew he was about to be terminated. We need to stop the complaints. Option 1, Terminate. Option 2, probation with some sort of anger management or stress management course. My experience in the past has been that volatile personalities do not change, yet in the past when we have had these types of problems, we always chose probation before termination. (and it always ended in termination) Our policy is open as to disciplinary actions. What would you do?
Comments
Just tell him that and wish him well.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman
You have already lost one ee over him, and that isn't going to help morale AT ALL, so I too am recommending that, based on the information at hand, you terminate.
Put yourself in his employees shoes... what would you want management to do?
Do yourself and your company a great favor. Sever the employer/employee relationship ASAP. Did not quality during probationary period. End of story.
I think you are safe to terminate. I'm just recommending you give a little thought to past practice and judge for yourself what degree of protection you think he may have under title vii or otherwise. Good documentation and decisive action should win for you no matter what level of redress he might seek. Good riddance.
I don't see that you, Mary Poppins, stated that the company looked into the complaints of harassment and found that they were valid -- the probationary manager had harased the employees. And I don't necessairly mean harassment based upon "potected status"; it could have been daily type harassment.
Did the company determine that the harassment occurred and if so, what did the company do at the time the harassment was occurring? Was there any counsleing or guidance or training from upper management for this manager. Or did the ocmpany just not care?
Secondly, I think it is interesting that all of you assumed that this was a man I was talking about.
We believe that the harrassment may be taking place, and addressed this during the first meeting.
One approach I always take when considering a termination is to ask three questions:
1. Has the EE been properly trained to do the job.
2. Has the EE been properly equipped to do the job (tools, computers, education, etc), and
3. Has the company created an environment to allow the EE to succeed in doing the job.
If you can answer yes to these questions, then additional steps are appropriate, if you answer no to any of them, then a different approach is in order.