Kevin's Christmas Challenge: Pick your Wage!!

[Kel]

But am guessing your talking about entrenched (ho ho) employees with long-term contracts who refuse to leave or change their lazy ways. Your only way forward then is playing the rules game....which can be twisty turny and fraught with grief and hassle.

That's exactly what I was talking about, yup.

One option (if your supervising a troublesome/lazy worker) is to take them to task on their shoddy work and/or lazy attitude. You don't have to be nasty, in fact it works best to be polite, accurate and succinct.

If you're in any way nasty, pretty much everything you do from that point can be legally construed as "harrassment". Keeping your cool is vital.

Then watch and log (in a notebook if your company doesn't have the appropriate paperwork) every infringement the problem person does. You then have a record of the person not following instruction and maybe safety procedures, etc. etc.

Obviously anything after this would rely on the support of your managers

Anything you do, needs to be in accordance with the employer's written disciplinary proceedings. If they don't have the "appropriate paperwork", then they don't have a policy and you're back into "harrassment". Although I believe Chiz was talking about general incompetence, rather than infringing rules and regs, which would make disciplinary proceedings a lot more clear cut.

Also, if the problem person makes the mistake of being aggressive (verbally or physically) towards you, then you are usually within your rights to ask them to leave site due to their inappropriate behavior.

As long as you haven't precipitated it with what you've said or done, or the way you've said or done it.

The final option is to put said worker on 'punishment detail', and only give them cruddy jobs to do. You can immediately knock back any claims of 'discrimination' by stating that in your opinion you are merely matching people with the jobs that they are best skilled to perform. After all, you wouldn't ask an inexperienced newby to excavate and record a cart burial.

That's fair enough, although if it ends up being long-term and then you try and get rid of the worker, you'll have to provide proof (if challenged) that you gave them formal notice of what you considered to be their shortcomings, and then gave them the opportunity and training to overcome them.

As to a 'black list' whats wrong with having a list of people skill levels? Surely this is the purpose of the skills passport. It just happens that said peoples skill level is 'useless' or 'unemployable.'
As far as I'm aware, it only becomes dodgy and potentially illegal if you infringe on the workers human rights (e.g. legal right to a private life) and if you pass on personal data (covered by the data protection act) to a third party without consent. Or am I wrong here?

A blacklist and the Skills Passport, aren't the same thing. The Skills Passport is in the control of the individual. If they're completely shoddy, then they'll never get any of the boxes ticked on their passport to start with. A blacklist is maintained by an employer - or group of employers. I believe that most legislation in the UK relates directly to the blacklisting of non-union members in unionised environments, although I've seen it twisted comfortably to suit other ends.


Bear in mind that in all this, I've come from a very aggressive and combative employment arena and I'm presenting the worst case scenario. Tempers ran high, summary sackings and failure to follow disciplinary process were common enough not to be shocking, and those with the stomach for a legal challenge could usually win a case for unfair dismissal. If you have a workforce where the useless are happy to take a hint and leave a job on request, then none of the legal nastiness will arise.