Legal Question in Business Law in Washington

Re: Firing an Employee

If you have no proof that the new employee is stealing, then you better not give that as a reason. Even if the new employee does not do anything inappropriate, you still put the old employee at risk for a possible defamation claim.

In any case, what I'm reading from your message is that the real reason you need to let the newcomer go is that the chemistry in the workplace is not working. I'm assuming your long time employee does not normally have trouble working with others. I'm also assuming that you have reason to believe that the long term employee would not make such an accusation in bad faith. Make sure that the problem isn't the newcomer's membership in a protected group (race, age, gender, national origin, marital status, religion or sexual orientation.) If you have any feeling at all that this might be the problem between the two, then you will need to work with the established employee to get over this. However, if you are convinced that this is not the source of the friction, then tell the newcomer, "I'm sorry, this has not worked out, and we've made the decision not to keep you on. Many factors go into this decision, and some of them involve matters that are prorietary." If you decide to go forward with this termination, do not allow yourself to get involved on a discussion of "why". That will be tough, but you'll make matters worse for yourself if you stray from that.

Under these facts (no proven misconduct), the departing employee is going to qualify for unemployment. You should accept that up front, and you may want to go ahead and tell them that they can go ahead and apply for unemployment and you will not dispute it.

In small business, harmony in the workplace is priceless. In my opinion, terminating employees is probably one of the most difficult aspects of running your own business, but sometimes you just can't afford not to do it.