How do you deal with staff who are damaging your business?

You take great care in recruiting for your business but somehow you still end up with somebody who is not suitable. They may be actively damaging your business or just not up to scratch. Either way there are some difficult decisions to be made.

Hopefully you have already given them an employment contract and a disciplinary procedure that you can follow. If not then ACAS have useful procedures that are best practice.

If the employee is still in their probationary period then the process is much simpler. If they have completed less than two years (including any periods recognised under TUPE Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment) the employee has limited employment rights but they still have some and you should do things legally and as kindly as you can.

The actual actions that you take will depend on the severity of the damage done to the business and it is useful to document all your conversations as well as to retain other evidence such as performance appraisals. This assumes, of course, that you carry out regular appraisals for your team but even if not they can be introduced if an employee’s work is slipping. You’re not just looking at the employee’s behaviour but at what you can do to help them to improve things.

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable route to recovery. As a small business owner you have put blood, sweat, tears, and probably a fair amount of cash into your business over the years and it may be hard to keep emotions out of the process. It is worth involving an independent HR professional to conduct any disciplinary meetings in order to ensure that the correct process is followed. They will also ensure that things remain calm and professional.

These could save you a lot of pain in the future:

  • employment contracts
  • disciplinary procedure
  • grievance procedure
  • regular performance appraisals


If you’re a member of the FSB then you can use their templates and limited advice free of charge.

Hopefully you will never need them but better safe than sorry.