Can a boss say just like that “you are fired”?

When I closely look at not only proprietary based or small companies, most of the employees are being an at-will employee. That is, the employer does not have to have good cause to terminate an employment and employers will take advantage of this protection.  Unless employee signed some sort of employment contract that states you cannot be terminated without good cause, which is usually not happening in most of the companies.

Usually an employee will have an employment contract in written (some times does’t exist) or oral and some times employment is depends on the discretion of an employer and not on the policies and terms. For example an employer walk up to an at-will employee and say, "I don't like your favourite color.  So you won’t get the promotion” or walk up to a sales man and say "Your performance is very poor because you did’t clean kitchen” or walk up to a programmer and say “you did’t not know how to repair a computer, so you are not eligible for increment” or an at-will employee will receive a mail saying that “You extended your sick leave, so you are fired”. Very few remedies for an at-will employee unless employer did something wrong to violate your employee rights or broke labor laws.

Fair and Faith

Usually employer will pledge many, and many of these promises can occur in all sorts of circumstances, such as during a casual conversation with an employee or as part of a discussion in an employee handbook. No matter how the promise occurs in all fairness employer should have commitment and first step before taking any decision is to learn the reasons and figure out whether employer have an employment contract with an employee. Occasionally, this will be as simple as opening the employee's personnel file and seeing a document labelled "employment contract." If terms are not included in the employment contract, then need to check employment policies before taking any decision.

Regardless of what type of contract you have with the employee, that contract will obligate employer to treat an employee fairly. This obligation is called the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

Best Way

If you want give appraisal or want to fire, document the course of events to prove you had AT LEAST one conversation with this person. In case of firing give him or her at least one opportunity to correct the problem BEFORE firing. When you finally make the decision you should be clear and should have a proper stand and should not be personal.

Some of the preventive measures

·    Be clear about duties when an employee is hired. Provide a job description the employee signs off on to prove he or she understood the duties s/he was taking on.

·    Be sure of your standing. Unless you are the company owner, know your employer's rules about firing someone, as there may be specific steps you are required to take in order to actually fire someone - even if the employee is not doing the job.

·    Act quickly when problems are noticed. Be sure to communicate performance problems as soon as you are aware of them, and coach staffers on how to improve. It's best to communicate this over email (ask them all who receive it to reply so that you know they have received and understood) so that there is some record of this communication. When you counsel an employee, focus on behaviour. "You have failed to meet deadlines on eleven out of the past sixteen assignments" is appropriate. "You're slacking off" is not appropriate.

·    Give benchmarks to meet. You can't expect all problems to be solved immediately, so giving a timeline and some improvements attached to deadlines will help show improvement (or not). If the employee continues to underperform, be sure he or she understands that improvements must match benchmarks or the employee will fail to meet expectations and be terminated.

·    Document everything, Record all the conversation, employee behaviour, work performance and what not. 

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