What To Do With Problem Employees:The 3-D Solution

Problem employees. We all have them. You want to fire them and honestly, you can't quite stand their presence in your company any longer. What do you do? You document, discipline and dismiss the employee: in that order.

When we say "document", you put in writing whatever violation the employee has committed and have the employee submit his written explanation to present his side of the story. (A little caution here --- before you write any violation on paper, make sure that you have adequately communicated to him verbally and if possible, have him receive a copy of the employee handbook or manual where a list of violations and their penalties are written down. This is to make sure that he "willingly" committed the violation and not because he was "ignorant" of company regulations.)

With the violation charge sheet and the employee's explanation on hand, you can now move to "discipline" the employee. In the Philippines, you can only dismiss or terminate the employee on the third violation. So, if it's the first violation, you have the option to give the employee a verbal or written reprimand or a light suspension of 3-5 days, depending on what is stipulated in the employee handbook for that particular violation.

Suppose that your employee lives up to his image of being a "problem" employee and commits the same violation for the second time, you have to go through the same routine of serving a violation notice to your employee and requiring him again to submit his written explanation. You discipline a second time. This is actually your employee's last chance since a third occurence of the same violation or another type of violation would actually line him up for dismissal from the service.

Now, let's just say that he did commit the same offense a third time. Once again, you go through the same procedure with serving the violation notice and requiring him to submit his written explanation. Now this is where you let the ax fall on his head. This time you serve a dismissal notice to your employee indicating that his services are no longer required by the company due to his habitual offenses on the job as documented in the past, the last of which was this particular violation.

However, there are employees who will not accept or sign the termination or dismissal notice. What do you do? Make sure that during the service of the dismissal notice you have a witness present in your office who can vouch that you followed proper procedure as prescribed by law. If the employee refuses to sign, you can write down that remark on the paper and ask the witness to sign his name on the paper to indicate that he witnessed the fact.

I know it's easier said than done but problem employees have to be weeded out of the company the proper way. Otherwise, you might end up having to pay the employee damages for failing to give him due process as prescribed by law.