Serious misconduct on an employee’s part requires immediate (and severe) action. If one of your employees has indulged in behavior that is not acceptable, you may have no choice but to terminate his services. But terminating someone is not easy as so much depends on an employee. He may be handling an important project and may actually be very good at his work – except the misconduct part. But what has to be done, has to be done. Before you pen down a termination letter, make sure that you have covered the following steps:
• Identify the problem and take legal advice
• Discuss the misconduct with employee in question
• Consider your options – a written warning perhaps
If after all this you feel that you still need to terminate the employee, well, open that Word file and begin typing. Writing a termination letter is one thing – writing an immediate termination letter is completely different. When you are doing the latter, you have to consider the repercussions as well. How will the employee react? Does he have access to sensitive information that he may leak in retaliation? Will there be an altercation? Once you prepare yourself for all this, you can begin writing the letter.
The termination letter should be curt and to the point – it should briefly say why the termination is taking place and what the employee should do in order to get his dues from the company. Here is an example of one:
Immediate Termination Letter Sample
July 3, 2015
Owen William
Sales Representative
The Resource Group
839 Brandywine Road
Meridian, ID 28903
Re: Immediate Termination
During your 3 years of employment as an accounts officer with The Resource Group, you have been warned 5 times that you are not meeting your targets. On one occasion, you have also been reprimanded about your misconduct with a valued customer. As you are aware, you were put on a probation for six months following this unfortunate event but apparently, it does not seem to have made much difference. We have received a similar complaint from another valued customer which we cannot ignore.
We regret to say that you have neither met your performance targets nor taken customer services seriously – both these are the essence of your work and cannot be overlooked. Therefore, the management has decided to terminate your services with immediate effect. You are instructed to hand over your charge to Mr. Peter Cliff immediately and contact Ms. Evelyn Masters in the human resource department, so that your dues can be managed accordingly.
Regards,
(Signature)
Brian Cooley
Manager Human Resources
The Resource Group
Tel: (777) 777-7777