Hi, are you terminating this employee for serious misconduct or redundancy?
Disciplinary procedure should be as follows:
Hold a performance meeting to address your concerns about the employee's performance. Give the employee prior warning of the time and nature of the meeting, preferably allowing them to bring a representative if they so wish. At the meeting:
(a) Clarify the performance objectives of the employee's job, referring to previous occasions they have been provided with or explained to the employee. These objectives should not be new to the employee.
(b) Discuss the employee's current and past levels of performance, focusing on how and when the employee has failed to meet the identified performance objectives. Identify the gap between the performance required and the performance provided, and seek from the employee any explanation as to why their performance has not reached the required standard.
(c) Develop an action plan of remedial steps to resolve the gap. Agree with the employee on what steps both parties will take (such as training) to improve the performance to meet the required standard. Such steps may include training, mentoring, or changing to more flexible hours of work.
(d) Identify a reasonable time period within which performance must improve to the specified standard. Reasonable time periods are discussed below.
(e) Specify the consequences of failing to meet the required standard. This may be counseling, reprimand, warning, or dismissal, depending on both your disciplinary process and the progression of the performance process.
(f) Give the employee an opportunity to comment on the process. It is not necessary for the employee to agree to the process and the performance criteria, but it is important that an opportunity is provided for them to raise any issues they may have.
(g) Schedule another meeting at the end of the time period to review the performance, again specifying the nature of the meeting and the ability of the employee to bring a representative.
Provide the employee with a written account of what was discussed. Some employers have the employee sign the document to agree that it is a fair and correct record of what was discussed and agreed upon, but it is not necessarily advisable, as it affords the employee an opportunity to protest (see below).
Monitor the employee's performance in the areas identified. Collect all relevant data, both objective and subjective. Note that if an area of performance was not addressed in the initial meeting, you cannot take disciplinary action for any failure in that particular area.
Hold the next performance meeting. If the employee has failed to meet the specified performance criteria, give them an opportunity to provide an explanation for not meeting the specified standard. Take this explanation into consideration, without any pre-judgment, and decide whether the disciplinary action specified will be taken. If this does not result in dismissal, repeat the process.
Redundancy is obviously very different.