Employee Termination During Probation: Do We Need to Provide Experience or Relieving Letters?

Hi, I'm Deepika. One of our employees is not performing well and behaving strangely by wearing night suits to the office. He is always busy with personal calls, ignores me when I try to talk to him while he plays games during office hours, and does not socialize with anyone. As a result, we have decided to terminate his employment within the probation period.

Experience and relieving letter

Do we still need to provide him with an experience letter or a relieving letter?

Notice period requirement

Also, regarding his notice period, we do not wish for him to serve any notice period. However, he insists that we are required to give advance notice of termination. Is this correct?

Termination of a Probationer Due to Underperformance

In the case of a probationer's termination during his probation period due to underperformance and unsatisfactory conduct, the employer can terminate his services subject to the termination clause in the contract of employment or orders of appointment. If there is no provision for notice, the employer need not issue any prior notice nor pay any notice salary in lieu thereof.

Issuance of Relieving Order or Experience Certificate

The issuance of a relieving order or experience certificate would be necessary if there is such a provision in the standing orders or service regulations. Even otherwise, I don't think there can be any harm in giving them to him to facilitate his future employment.

Hi Deepika, from another of your posts today regarding payslip formats, I understand that your firm is an IT company with about 23 employees. Only the PT is deducted from the salary, and the rest is paid to the employee. It is not clear whether there is a TDS deduction for non-employees or if there are PF or ESI deductions for employees.

The relevance of the above information here is related to the question of whether your company has all the correct documentation or legal processes in place.

The current post, rather than focusing on performance issues of the employee, seems to concentrate more on attitude or conflicts in employee-employer perception. If there is a performance issue, there should be records of discussions and initiation of a performance improvement plan before the member's services are terminated.

Judging by the member's attitude, it seems like he may not leave quietly. Therefore, it is better to either pay the notice period amount as well or have a proper performance assessment process along with warning letters for any misconduct. This way, in future instances, the member cannot claim that he wasn't warned or informed.

Thank you.