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If someone has less than 2 years’ service, do I need to follow the formal performance procedure?

If someone has less than 2 years' service, do I need to follow the formal performance procedure?

Employees with less than 2 years’ do  not have protection from unfair dismissal.  Therefore it is possible to dismiss a short serving employee for poor performance issuing any previous formal warnings.  However, some employment claims, such as discrimination claims, do not require the employee to have a minimum level of service, and therefore following the normal performance process may be a safer option.  Furthermore, recruiting and training staff can be time consuming and costly so it is usually a good idea to raise the problem with the employee to give them an opportunity to address this before considering dismissal.

Our HR Protect performance improvement policy, P13: Performance Improvement Policy and Procedure applies to all employees but expressly states that employees with less than 2 years’ service can be dismissed without any previous warnings.

Associated resource

P13 – Performance Improvement Policy and Procedure