Having recently conducted a number of meetings where we invite employees to attend a ‘disciplinary hearing’, it always seems to the employee a harsh phrase when it might be a probationary period review or the end of a fixed term contract.

Is it necessary to use the phrase disciplinary, or can you say, for example, ‘probationary review meeting’ as long as it states that this may lead to your contract being terminated?

With our policy, it states that within probationary period we can go to final warning or dismissal, and I know they don’t have any legal protection (apart from wrongful dismissal which rarely gets used) but I’m sure with probationers in particular, when it’s not working out, we would prefer us to just invite them into a review meeting, tell them and give them notice without having a ‘dismissal’ under the disciplinary process on their record?

Thoughts welcome, not just on probationers, but fixed term, and even after a period of ill-health where in our t&cs we can terminate their contract (subject to DDA).
Alison Bond