Must be true
A haulage company owner got in touch this week.
I’d say he was calling for advice, but actually, he just wanted the green light on his plans!
He had an employee with three years of service, and he wanted to get rid.
And because “it says it on the internet”, he believed that as he’d never given him an employment contract, he could just give him his marching orders.
I must admit to being a little taken aback by this, which may explain my blunt response:
“No, it does not say that on the internet”.
He retorted to explain that it does, on all the websites he’d looked at, including the government one.
I’ll admit to being puzzled at this point. I KNEW he was wrong; I KNEW what he was proposing was illegal.
But he was adamant he’d read it in black and white, so I had to get to the bottom of it and requested the “government” site in question where he’d acquired this game-changing, groundbreaking information.
Lo and behold, there it was, in black and white – you CAN just fire them if it’s not working out.
But…. (there’s always one of those).
This IS the case if they’ve been with you for under two years, but the game changes when they tip into their third year of service, which this employee had.
You’d think this vital piece of information might be included somewhere near the top, but no, it was way down on page five, so I can’t really blame Mr Haulage for missing it.
It’s a cautionary tale – not everything you read on the internet is true.
And even if it is, there are almost always caveats and context that MUST be taken into account if you want to avoid legal hot water.
So next time something in the world of HR seems “too good to be true”, simple or straightforward, give us a call because, having worked in employment law for decades, I can assure you, almost nothing is as simple as you’d like it to be!
