Employees must have been with their employer for 1 year before they can claim unfair dismissal. However, from 6th April 2012 it is to be raised to two years. For those of us old enough to remember it used to be 2 years.
The new rules apply to those employees employed from the 6th April 2012 onwards and is not backdated for existing staff.
These timescales do not apply to discrimination claims, so it will be interesting to see if more employees look for a discrimination angle. If that is the case make sure you have kept good records of the reasons why performance was poor, the opportunities you gave the employee to improve and the consequences where clear if they did not meet the grade. That way employees are clear about why they were dismissed and less likely to make up their own reasons for the dismissal.
Contractual arrangements and policies and procedures may refer to disapplying full disciplinary procedures for 1 year. It will be interesting to see how this changes things going forward and whether employers revert to using the 2 year period.
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