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Dismissal
A major national charity appointed a new chief executive.
Warned that she might be a bit of a loose canon, one of the
trustees was nominated to supervise her work on behalf of
the trustee board who were very keen to be kept informed in
detail of all new initiatives and other major developments.
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... she was failing to
keep them in touch with a range of actions that cost
the charity money. |
Thinking that it was not the right way to deal with a person
of such seniority, however, they excluded any reference to
a disciplinary process in the contract, did not introduce
performance targets, and relied on the good relationship with
the nominated trustee to see them through.
Whilst the trustees felt that their new chief executive was
good at leading the staff team, they were alarmed to learn
that she was failing to keep them in touch with a range of
actions that cost the charity money. These included entering
into partnership with a lottery operator who turned out to
be bankrupt, failing to invoke legal break clauses on a merchandising
operation that went very wrong, and misrepresenting the trustees'
views in an attempt to secure external funding. These concerns
only came to light much later, when on several occasions the
trustees expressed their disquiet.
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the charity learnt
some painful and
expensive lessons. |
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After years of this, their patience finally snapped, and
they told the chief executive that they had lost all confidence
in her and that sooner or later she would have to go, asking
her to name her terms. She promptly resigned and claimed constructive
dismissal - by telling her that, she said, they had broken
their relationship of trust, making it impossible for her
to remain. She won, and the charity learnt some painful and
expensive lessons:
- Hoping to act in an informal and friendly way is no substitute
for having good procedures. Their existence, if properly
handled, is the sign of professionalism.
- If someone has got to go, make it as easy as possible
for them to do so, including offering support to come to
terms with their own shortcomings.
- All employees, even chief executives, have a right to
a proper disciplinary process. If one had been invoked earlier,
many of the problems might have been avoided.
- Proper records of performance based on realistic targets
will provide the effective basis for organisational success
and satisfactory disciplinary outcomes. Their absence enables
poor performers to offer the excuse that they didn't
know they were getting it wrong, and feign surprise when
confronted too late with their shortcomings.
- However good an employee may be, if she or he does something
really bad in one area, it still has to be addressed. Failure
to deal with poor performance early on makes it much more
difficult to confront the issue later.
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