How to terminate Employees Protected by Federal and State Laws. If you decide on voluntary terminations, the procedure is similar to what you learned in Chapter 10 for high-risk separations. A special note about personnel' compensation: You can't separate an employee because she has taken advantage of workers' compensation. Or, certainly, you may have fired the jobholder for bad behavior or poor work productivity. Many business owners put off the inevitable by fantasizing the jobholder will get better with time, or the reprimands and written notices will eventually do their job and the message will get through. For example, suppose you separate someone for theft after a proper investigation and review of the evidence. For example, you would like your termination memorandum to reflect the company and your position, not someone else's.

Before you write a jobholder reprimand notice, you must guide this programmer through this problem. If the separated employee wishes, she can release her frustrations and "tell off" management. At these meetings, you should be honest with the workers about the firm's future and the need for cost cuts. Do what is right and remove the problem employee from your employees before you are sorry you didn't. At this point, you need to draft a worker dismissal notification that explains the reason for the firing and the rights and responsibilities of the worker and of your small company. * Explanation for the reasons of the termination. As well, if the worker's conduct goes against all company policies, you may decide to table the discussions of firing personnel and employer conduct. If your group health plan has a third-party administrator (like Blue Cross Blue Shield), you have 30 days after the worker's lay off to tell the administrator. However, with this, you should also provide substantiation that such training and counseling did not upgrade their productivity.