Dear All,

I’ve been reading these pages with great interest for some time and have learnt a lot and hope you can help me and firstly would like to apologise for the length of my post.

I’ve been approached by the Head of one our team within the company I work who has had some issues for some time with a member of staff in his team.

The staff member has been with us for 3 years now and has done his role well generally up until this year.

I’m the HR Administrator and he had spent some time with myself, but primarily my manager detailing the issues.

He adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach initially, spent a lot of encouraging and motivating this guy and things seemed to improve over the Summer.

On Wednesday evening, the Manager came in to see me saying things had come to a head somewhat, following his team member’s submission of a proposal which was incorrect in many ways and had it gone to potential customers, would’ve caused manay problems.

They had a meeting on Monday and things were discussed, apparently the meeting was quite heated with the staff member saying his manager was incorrect and that he was doing a great job in his own eyes.

The staff member is a naturally very confident person, perhaps overconfident on some occasions and has a lot of self belief which can mean that even if we suggest training, he’s adamant he doesn’t need it.

My manager is currently away and it’s just myself and my manager in the team, so I said I’d look into what we could do and where we could from here.

Having checked with various books and also after consulting elsewhere, I looked at the capability procedure which seems to be the most appropriate course of action. (we do not have a procedure written in place at this time)

It became clear that I would require copies of appraisals held this year between them and also that I would require a summary of all that’s happened before we can move down this route.

When I met up with the manager yesterday to discuss this and explain what the next steps would be including an interview etc., specifically structured performance plan for a couple of months with set targets and levels his team member would need to meet etc., the manager informed me that he didn’t have nearly enough time to do this and couldn’t we just resolve it some other way.

He indicated to me that his team member would be prepared to leave on mutual agreement though obviously he can’t be sure about this.

Compromise agreements are completely new to me and having consulted our solicitors they said that unless you’d been through the above procedure and shown that you had documentary evidence to prove that you’d tried to help the person reach the level expected, it could be that upon our co worker seeking legal advice, he would be advised to take us to a tribunal.

I’m meeting up with our MD this afternoon and will be presenting all these facts to him. I feel at a bit of a loss to be honest. Although the procedure would be time consuming I do feel it’s the best option to look at initially however I do take on board that our Head of is working a lot of overtime as it is.

Again, apologies for the length of this post, I just wanted to present all the facts and would ask for your advice/experience of the capability procedure and/or compromise agreements.

Thankyou
Antonia
Antonia Harrison