Keep the security guard in the lobby for 2 weeks. If the difficult employee refuses to sign or walks away from the meeting, document this fact. Also, every audience is expecting you to be fair and reasonable with the difficult worker. Just simply state the facts and the reasons the worker's actions were unacceptable, and you're well within your rights. Did those memos obviously define the problem that you want corrected? Ask your small company's Human resources department (also known as the workers department). Doing so will decrease or eliminate the possibility of that worker's sowing seeds of discord among other workers, getting them to "side with him" to the state labor board that no policy was ever mentioned. However there are inform-tale signs of passive insubordination. And the layoff boss is not to express any personal opinions about the worker or make any remarks that could be misread as discriminatory. If you even make a small mistake in the notification, it may leave you on the losing end of a grievance or lawsuit.

If you want to lower the termination risk and cost, I encourage you to study these chapters. If you do not take action against the insubordinate employee, this individual can quickly and easily cause your other personnel to become difficult. I hope you now see that terminating a bad employee while not "fun" is the only recourse you have when you want to upgrade results and morale. Here are some other alternatives: If the jobholder is a poor performer, you should put the employee into escalating discipline and give him a chance to upgrade. Every firm from the smallest home based company to large corporations should have one. Before you have had a chance to sit down and discuss a sick worker's situation, you should not just replace their position with another employee.