Realism – The Starting Point
We all need to be realistic about what’s going on in Lloyds!
As top management in companies tend to do, the people behind the offensive against staff have come up with what probably seems a bright idea – pinching someone else’s discredited concept, that’s easy to implement and is going to be manageable without an enormous cost overhead. It will put most of the pressure on line managers, which is hardly a concern when you’re interested in the big numbers, not what happens to individuals.
And no one should discount the possibility that this is more about lining people up for dismissals that avoid the cost of redundancy rather than about performance per se.
Members should take any criticism seriously.
Your Work Diary
In my last newsletter on performance I said that defeating phoney criticisms is likely to be more about perspiration than inspiration.
Keeping a daily work diary, boring though it may be, is going to be a big part of helping us help you. You need to record:
- Any unreasonableness in setting your objectives, targets, expectations.
- Any material breaches of Lloyds’ own policies in your performance management.
- Any praise you receive.
- Any criticism or lack of criticism.
- Any failure to provide guidance where requested or required.
- Any other absence of managerial support.
- Any failure to provide training.
- Any staff shortages or issues that have affected your personal performance.
- Any other resource failures that have had knock-on effects on your personal performance.
- Any system changes that have had an adverse effect.
- The effects of changes of manager.
- The impact of Illness and disabilities on your performance.
- Anything else that you might want to rely on to defend yourself if you are criticised.
Give Us A ‘Heads Up’
Coming to us when you are well on the way to dismissal is not very helpful.. to say the least.
We want to hear from you when you get the first whiff of criticism; that will give us the best possible opportunity to help shape events rather than scurrying to catch up.
There may well not be much to do initially and we would expect to be able to help you arrest most cases, but we do want to be aware at the outset.
The Process
We have built a process that is capable of managing a very large number of cases simultaneously but we need to be able to operate a disciplined ‘production line’.
If you see a problem coming please email us at Performance@btuonline.co.uk. All we need is your membership number (if you know it) or enough details for us to identify you (name and D.O.B should do).
We will then email you a link to a very detailed online form that will give us the facts we need to structure your case.
Once we are prepared we will then discuss how best to proceed.
The Law
Without getting into too much law (if you are a lawyer outside the employment field as a number of members are and want to know more about this please email me) members need to understand that Employment Tribunals are not permitted to substitute their judgement for the reasonable judgement of an employer in dismissal cases.
The operative word here is reasonable, so when a Claimant (the employee) submits a claim for unfair dismissal there needs to be a properly joined up case that shows the employer to have been unreasonable. The law is not necessarily on the side of employees.
That said, in our experience Employment Judges tend to be able to identify unreasonableness with unerring accuracy provided cases are properly put together and based on fact not assertion. Half-baked rubbish does not last long in the Employment Tribunal.
This is why we need a great deal of detail. Without that detail we will not pursue claims.
Our Guidance
I’ve referred before in newsletters to the old adage that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client!
Fundamental to the successful prosecution of cases is to follow our guidance and not start dealing with performance issues yourself without advice.
Our case files are littered with examples of members who set off confidently, ignoring the need for advice (or even ignoring the advice they were given) and who found themselves dismissed. The best analogy here is the world of data recovery in IT. Much data recovery tends to resemble throwing a lifebelt to a drowning man – when it would have been much better if he had not fallen in in the first place!