Kim Shuckhart, our FMHRA Liaison spoke to us at this months meeting.  She is employed with the Human Resources Department at Gate City Bank and spoke to us about problem employees.
 
 

Kim first talked about employment-at-will and then the most common reasons employees are terminated.  The first reason discussed was poor performance.  When an employee is not performing their duty correctly, an employer has an absolute right to fire at any time.  To back up this decision the employer should have specific and correct documentation for the reason to fire.   The second reason is poor attendance and tardiness.  An employer needs to be able to distinguish between excused absences and unexcused absences.  The fourth reason to excuse an employee would be violation of company policy.  The employer should make sure that employee handbook is readily available to all employees.  All employees should have knowledge of where it is located and the consequences of not following these policies.
 
 

During the process of terminating an employee, there should be two people to avoid legal problems.  It is also important that these two employees taking care of the termination are in a higher position that the employee being terminated.  A mistake that a lot of managers make is that they do not take the performance appraisals seriously and give the employee a good rating when in reality they are not performing at this level.  When this manager does want to fire and employee they do not have the right to because of false past documentation.  So when terminating an employee the employer should follow four guidelines for the meeting:

Who, there should be two people present to avoid legal problems.
Where, in an enclosed room where no one can see who is meeting with whom.
When, at the end of the day so the employee can avoid humiliation in front of their co-workers and friends.
What, keep it short, simple, and to the point.
 Matters discussed at the meeting were the PHR exam.  The deadline is March 5 and the window for the exam is May1-June 30.  More information is available at the shrm webpage.  The Resume CD will be mentioned and available to employers at the next FMHRA meeting.
 
 

Melissa Oeltjen

Secretary
 
 

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