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Fire Smart

“Employers should always fire on the facts,” an employment lawyer once told me. “You win a case based on the facts.”

Yet too many employers are lulled into believing that they can forego documenting the facts if the company has the right to fire someone. While most state labor laws hold that employees who aren’t covered by a contract can be fired at any time, that doesn’t prevent wrongful termination lawsuits.

Your policies on what constitutes a fireable offense should be clear and distributed to employees. Your displeasure with a particular employee’s work should come as no surprise to him when you call him in to deliver the bad news. Otherwise, the person could claim “ambush” and make your motives look suspicious.

“If you set the expectations at the beginning, and you are giving feedback, the employee will see the writing on the wall,” said Diane Pfadenhauer, the owner of Employment Practices Advisors in Northport, New York.

If you provided the employee opportunities and resources to improve his performance, you certainly should document those good-faith efforts. That benevolence is proof that your intent wasn’t to get rid of the person but to help him salvage a tarnished work record. It’s hard to find fault with that.