Part 4
Silkin Management Group’s first three articles on various guidelines to consider when terminating staff have been posted on this Silkin Management Group blog site as well as on the Silkin Management Group blog site which you can link to here: http://silkinmanagementgroup.org/.
The previous Silkin Management Group articles discussed 6 different guidelines to be aware of when considering letting a staff member go. In our last Silkin Management Group article we went over making sure you have consistency in your decisions and in your procedural actions. As mentioned in Part 2 of this series, you can’t be “shooting from the hip”, you must be consistent in your actions.
A “must” in being consistent and protecting yourself from potential legal problems associated with termination, and that all Silkin Management Group consultants go over with Silkin Management Group clients, is having adequate office policies and job descriptions in place. These are the backbone of being consistent and having proper documentation.
To help ensure that Silkin Management Group clients have policies and job descriptions, clients new to the Silkin Management Group program receive Silkin Management Group’s copyrighted Job Description and Office Policy Manual. The documents in Silkin Management Group’s manual can easily be edited and adapted to ones own specific office activities.
As pointed out in our earlier Silkin Management Group blogs, there are many things to consider if you are at a point where you are looking at terminating an employee. With the assumption that you have policies and job descriptions in place, here two more points that Silkin Management Group suggests that Silkin Management Group clients look at regarding the termination process:
• Skeletons and Pretext: Sometimes a practice tries subtly, or not so subtly, to cover up the real reason for termination and offer something that sounds plausible. Cover-ups usually unravel at very inopportune times (like with labor investigators, lawyers, judges.)
• Track Record: Why consider termination now? Does the employee have a history or track record of problems or is this something new?
We will present a few more guidelines for termination decisions, as well as guidelines to follow once the decision has been made in upcoming Silkin Management Group blogs.
Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant
Find out more about Silkin Management Group at http://www.ikarma.com/user/silkinmanagementgroup.