FROM THE WEB: RELATED INFORMATION: After your eyewitnesses have testified, the jobholder will tell his side of the story. During your discussion, you must inform the at will worker what he or she did wrong, inform her or him the actions you'll take, and warn him or her of the consequences if the action reoccurs. If it does not turn the jobholder around then it is a critical document in layoff process. If you have a difficult employee, you should always give a oral notice for the first offense , followed by reformatory action or counseling, before you consider lay off of the worker. If a worker is causing problems, but the company fails to list this problem as a reason for separation, terminating this worker will be difficult. For example, you might say the employee caused great problems with her or his disposition and then describe, in detail, how it affected the company. Before you reach the point when lay off is necessary, you must document all problems you have had with the employee. It is important to remember a court can use the letter as legal substantiation in the future, so it is important to draft a copy and have someone else in the personnel organization review it. Again, this is only a jobholder written notice, and you don't want to make threats about dismissing if work doesn't improve. If you ask them to work on Sunday or participate in a Christmas celebration, this is clearly not gross misconduct. Even verbal business policy can offer you protection so long as you can prove that everyone heard the do's and don't's in your small company work place. Papers and rehabilitative action for misbehavior problems at work is time consuming.

In approaching separation, you must use escalating discipline. Here you inform the disgruntled worker exactly what you expect of him and what he should do to correct the problem. But all efforts have failed and you now should terminate him or her. Terminating an employee for sexual harassment is not as easy as one might think.