You should never email or fax an employee separation notice to anyone. This confused his manager until he received a call in the middle of the night to make clear that Bill was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack. Similar to escalating discipline, you should let the accused worker have a representative at the meeting if he asks for one. Since this is such a substantial step in the dismissal method, you need to plan ahead of time what you'll say to the jobholder. Most states invoke labor laws like employment at will which says the boss may fire any employee at any time, for any reason. You may learn in the appeal the firm has forced the worker out because of a hostile work environment. At times it becomes necessary to sack employees for economic reasons. When it comes to dimissing employee problems, you should always follow proper procedures. To sack her, you just keep writing up your observations of her difficult behavior. You can rest easy that it will be plain to a court and any legal defender that you have done everything possible to be fair in your layoff of personnel. o The political fallout from sacking the jobholder could risk your job and career. This chapter covers how to treat your difficult employee fairly, honestly and with dignity as you layoff his employment.

o You gave the worker chances (for the most part 2 or 3 chances are enough) and reasonable time to improve. Therefore, it is important for you to either get a insubordinate worker in shape or to layoff her or him before it leads to more problems. Often in large corporations, layoffs include early retirement packages to long-term workers.