Employment Lawyer Montreal

By Author: Ariel Brady
Total Articles: 248
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At OLS, we are a boutique law firm specialized in labour and employment law. For over 75 years, we have provided expert legal advice to Employers, business owners and HR professionals in the areas of labour and employment law. Labour and Employment Law has changed significantly over time and has become a very complex and highly specialized area. One question we are often asked is as follows:

I have an Employee who is not a good performer and has been with me for a long time. I can’t afford to be in this kind of situation any longer. What do I do?

Courts and arbitrators are generally very protective of Employees who have been with a company for a significant period of time. A lot will depend on how long your Employee has been preforming poorly and on what the cause of the poor performance is.

If the cause of the poor performance is deliberate malfeasance or a deliberate lack of effort, then there are disciplinary options available to you. There is a world of difference in the eyes of the law between can’t and won’t. However, a Court will expect to see proof that someone is deliberately ...
... performing in a manner that is substandard or inconsistent with their best possible effort.

However, if the cause of the poor performance is that the Employee is unable to perform well even though they are doing their best, you will need to consider how long this problem has been tolerated. It is likely that you will need to offer forms of support before resorting to disciplinary action. The reason for this is that if the Employee has performed consistently poorly, then it will be difficult to justify why you have suddenly chosen to act and you will need to plan an alternate approach to the problem. On the other hand, if the Employee has suddenly begun performing poorly then you are better able to take disciplinary steps to remedy the problem quickly.

As you can see, depending on the problem, you may first need to offer the Employee support and coaching to improve their performance. However, if you address the problem of poor performance immediately rather than allowing it to fester, you are better able to justify a decision to take disciplinary action to fix the problem.

If you have a poor performer on your staff and would like to know what you can do, give us a call today at (514)845-0141 so we can speak to you in confidence about your particular situation.