Employees with less than 2 years’ do not have protection from unfair dismissal, however care should be taken to ensure your records accurately reflect their length of service.
If an employee does have less than 2 years’ service, then it is technically possible to dismiss this short serving employee for poor performance without issuing any previous formal warnings. However, you need to be mindful of whether this may cause industrial relations issues with the Trade Unions, and also mindful that there are employment claims, such as discrimination claims, which 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 to work in the school 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 for Schools performance management policy, P13: Performance Management 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.
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