9 Steps Your Employer Must Take Before Dismissing You For Poor Performance

If your employer fired you for allegedly performing poorly, and he did not follow the proper process, your dismissal may be unfair.

You should not be dismissed because of one mistake or poor performance assessment. If you are underperforming, these are the 9 steps your employer must take before dismissing you for poor performance:

1. Provide Job Descriptions and Set Clear Expectations.

Your employer must ensure that you understand everything that you are required/expected to do.

2. Conduct Orientations & Training.

Your employer must ensure that you understand how to perform all of your responsibilities/tasks.

3. Provide Helpful Supervision.

Your employer (or manager) should supervise you until you are capable of performing your job independently.

4. Routinely Evaluate Performance And Provide Feedback.

Your employer should consistently evaluate your performance and give you accurate feedback. Your employer must especially tell you about the areas that you need to improve and give you guidance on how to improve.

5. Provide Additional Training, Mentorship And Support.

If you are underperforming in any area, your employer needs to provide training, mentorship & support to help you improve.

6. Give Reasonable Time To Learn And Improve.

Your employer must give you a reasonable amount of time to improve your performance. In most cases, one mistake or poor appraisal should not cause you to get fired (unless, perhaps, if you are a pilot or a surgeon). Employees in most jobs must be given the time and opportunity to improve.

7. Routinely Conduct Performance Appraisals.

Your employer should conduct performance appraisals to examine your performance over the period, give feedback on how you can improve, and set goals & future dates for re-evaluation (which should give you a reasonable amount of time to improve). These appraisals should provide an accurate assessment of your performance and help you to understand how you can improve.

8. Give Warnings.

If you are underperforming, your employer must give you warnings that if your performance does not improve he may have to dismiss you.

9. Give The Final Warning.

If your performance still hasn’t improved after you received multiple warnings and enough time has passed that you should have improved, your employee has to give you a final warning that if you do not improve by a certain date, you will be dismissed.

If your employer takes all these steps and you are still underperforming, then it may be fair to dismiss you.

But if your employer dismisses you without taking these steps, even if you made an error at work, failed to achieve a goal or got a bad performance appraisal, that dismissal may be unfair and you may be entitled to compensation.