Letter dismissing an employee for poor performance

What is a letter dismissing an employee for poor performance and when should you use it?

This letter forms part of our suite of materials to support you when you’ve invoked your performance improvement policy.

This letter covers a dismissal decision for poor performance by an employee.

Our step-by-step guide to how to handle employee performance will highlight what you should have done up to this stage and takes you through the appropriate next steps.

We recommend that you read this guide before continuing and that you and the employee follow the steps closely.

You should also ensure that you are following the procedures in your performance review policy.

If you don’t have a policy in place it is important that you get one.

Here’s our performance improvement policy 

Dismissal procedure

Dismissal decisions can be controversial and employees who face them may feel resentful, embarrassed, unfairly treated and angry, which can make discussions between you and them quite challenging.

Prior to reaching a dismissal decision and to sending this letter, you should have had at least one, if not more, meetings with the employee to discuss your concerns about their performance and to give them the opportunity to improve.

It’s important to ensure that the employee was told in advance that failure to improve could lead to dismissal, what aspects of their performance have been identified as unacceptable, and what needs to be done to improve.

If you have not considered the earlier letters in this template suite, such as an invitation to informal discussion about performance or a first formal meeting about performance, you should consider whether it would be more appropriate to complete these first.