Justine Vaughan of Triangle HR

Blog: The proposal to provide employers with the freedom to terminate their relationship with underperforming employees will be gratefully received by local businesses.

Should the changes be implemented, employers are more likely to increase their existing workforce if they have the confidence to manage their teams without the threat of receiving a claim for unfair dismissal due to poor performing or unproductive workers.

If a business is to grow, it is essential to invest in staff, and currently many business owners/managers feel that they are being held back due to UK employment legislation in relation to unfair dismissal. In many cases they put up with poorly performing workers as an alternative to dealing with the issue.

Implementing this route of dismissal will help businesses focus on growing rather than having the worry of whether their new recruit will work out, how they should deal with existing underperformers and the impact unproductive workers are having on the rest of the team.

This route of dismissal will allow employers to make decisions based on the capability and suitability of an employee without the fear of receiving a tribunal claim. And where employees are considered unsuitable they will still be fairly compensated.

Business owners/managers need the confidence to hire in the first place. From our experience of working with business throughout Shropshire and surrounding counties, employers are concerned about taking on new staff as they are nervous about it all going wrong.

Whilst growth is the number one consideration for businesses, 70 per cent of the 6,000 businesses surveyed by the British Chamber of Commerce feel that the current dismissal rules are burdensome and therefore extremely challenging for employers who are trying to grow their business.

One in five have been threatened by Employment Tribunal claims, so the threat to confidence for businesses is extremely worrying.

If the proposed changes are introduced, my advice to all business owners/managers would be to ensure that they have effective performance management processes in place and that all managers are appropriately trained so that they can clearly justify the decisions being made regarding the suitability, or capability, of an employees’ performance if dismissal is to be applied.

By Justine Vaughan of Triangle HR, Shrewsbury