Be Excellent To Each Other

That's why I said the extreme end.

Generally it's a good idea with performance issues, and the decent thing to do, to give someone a little bit of time to show that they can turn their poor performance around.

Does the government pay for it? That and the person who replaces him while he's away?

Some people are just twats though.

Our place generally does an "agreed quitting" which costs a fortune, but is worth it in the long run.

What is that? Sort of the "don't phone us" method?

Agreed, no way he could spell burglary and bothered, but not high.

Hell, I can't even spell burglary.

"it's not really working out for both of us, how about you just don't come back tomorrow if we pay you some cash still give you a 3 month notice period"

Eesch, that does sound expensive.

The length of notice period is obviously contract based, and that is the extreme end. We either do 1 or 3 month notice periods I think.

Eh? What sort of a daft question is that? That's not something you're required to do by law (although ebad faith in respect to this could cause the dismissal to be unfair), it's something I'm saying I would expect an employer to do if they weren't cackling mustachioed mine owners.

some of the stuff that's all fair and reasonable in a 10,000 strong workforce does become an utter ballache in a 10 strong workforce, mind. You don't have the leeway to spend 3 months rehabilitating one tenth of your workforce at once, for example.

No one is forcing you to do that, are they?

Well, depends if you want to be thought of as a mustachioed mine owner, I guess.

No, but it wouldn't be "decent" if we didn't, right?

It would certainly reduce exposure to claims, for sure. Paying them to sod off is the best way.

Which is also related to the reason that many small businesses don't employ women in their twenties...

I'm not sure where anyone has even remotely suggested spending 3 months rehabilitiating a tenth of anyone's workforce. I've got better things to do than have arguments about things I haven't said. My arse needs scratching, for one.

ONE MONTH UNTIL CHRISTMAS EVE

So, the people we bought the house off still haven't changed the address with the DVLA for their car, despite us forwarding on every tax disc reminder we've had for them over the last 5 years or so. He's now had a notice of intended prosecution from the police for speeding. I was tempted to bin it, but Mrs K has sent it on. What can happen if you effectively ignore that sort of notice? Presumably you'd get a bigger fine for not paying the initial fine?

You get three months training with full pay.

I assume he'd be tried and convicted in abstentia, then they will look a bit to recover the money. The person might then get a shock at insurance renewal time, or if they are ever stopped and identified, probably arrested for non payment of fines.

If you go through the process of evaluating what steps to take when someone isn't up to snuff, decide that training would help, get them trained, give them a reasonable time to evaluate their progress post-training, decide they're not any better at their job, then go through the steps needed to get them replaced, that's going to be a 3 month process pretty much any way you look at it.

Sorry, but bollocks is it. If we're just going to make up timescales I say you could do it in an afternoon and still have time for a celebratory pub crawl.

Also, if you've got a halfway decent appaisal system you wouldn't get to the point of having to give someone 3 months grace when you want to fire them anyway.

EDIT - also, bear in mind you'd realise pretty bloody quickly if someone's not up to snuff, and they have no unfair dismissal protection for the first TWELVE MONTHS.

Doesn't work if they've fluffed the interview, got the job, then you realise they're shit though.

You can fire them whenever and however you want during the firt 12 months, as they have no unfair dismissal protection until then.

I think this is about where we came in...

They want to increase it to 24 months, is the point. As well as other changes to make it easier to fire longstanding emplyoees.

The suggestion, by the Tories, Lib Dems and Grim..., that it is hard to fire someone in this country is frankly laughable. We have amongst the worst (from an employee's point of view) employee protection laws in the EU.

And we're back to things that were never said. It's hard to fire someone for not being up to scratch. It's pretty easy to fire them for misconduct, or to get rid of them via redundancy. In fact, in most large companies redundancy certainly appears to be the de-facto way of getting rid of employees you don't want. It's costlier and takes longer, but your liability exposure is decidedly minimised. Not least because it's generally a lot less acrimonious.

NO IT ISN'T. You can get rid of them immediately during the first 12 months. How fecking easy does it need to be?

If you need more than 12 months to work out whether someone's going to be good at their job you've no business being an employer.

After that there's a really short process you are legally required to go through to get rid of someone for poor performance (letter, meeting, letter), and getting to that shouldn't be very hard to either head off or deal with properly if you've been monitoring performance in even a perfunctory fashion.



Ha! That's definitely not the case where I've been where there have been redundancies. It's also a lot more expensive to do.

Someone on a lawyers' forum was saying yesterday that at his company they'd performance managed out a load of salespeople rather than make them redundant, beccause it's really not hard to do.

Oh, sure - I don't necessarily disagree with that. But you and Mali were saying that it's only reasonable to add retraining into the mix. And if you do that, it's not a short simple process - and that's a problem in a small workforce.

Yeah, and that shouldn't be an issue with someone who's been with you a long time (i.e. more than 12 months)- they're not suddenly gonig to start being shit. So if you've got to the point where you want to fire them and you haven't already discussed their performance with them then you're a cretin.

Unless you've only just become their boss. For example.

Where are their previous performance reviews and appraisals then?
Week 1 of becoming someone's boss you should meet to discuss expectations and measurable appraisable stuff.

Indeed. And have had a chat with their previous boss about how they've got on.

"Yeah, he was shit, but I couldn't be arsed to do anything about it, good luck"

In which case with that sort of shit man management I'd be looking at firing his previous boss, unless he'd already left the organisation.

Good plan!

It'll take 3 months though, once you have gone through the training...

Sigh.

New Chief Operating Officer doing the rounds. Comes to speak to our department. Says, rather loudly, to our head of department "so do you find it difficult to find good staff then?"

I suspect he didn't quite mean it like that.

In my case, the whole thing went away.

Wow, really? That's not like The Man at all.

The Welsh have it easy.

Take your arguing elsewhere. We were talking about MY problems.

I sailed through a mobile speed trap in a 30 mph area at a hair over 40, back in '07 or so. I received an NIP a few weeks later. Ignored it, just to see what would happen; nothing further ever came of it.

Keep watching.

Heh. Slowcoach.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15870161

I think that's the saddest thing I've read all year.

Horrible, just horrible for everyone involved.

After three months of careful forensic analysis of the photograph, they still couldn't see anyone behind the wheel and gave up due to lack of evidence.

Oh, that's dreadful.

I lost my license when I did that