Examples of insubordination include gross misbehavior, hitting a supervisor or falsifying records. A special note about personnel' compensation: You can't terminate an employee because she has taken advantage of workforce' compensation. As a boss, you'll have to earn the respect of your employees. This escalating discipline also creates the documentation necessary if you need to lay off the worker once all efforts at rehabilitation fail.

As well, if the worker's conduct goes against all firm policies, you may decide to table the discussions of sacking personnel and employer conduct. If you don't apply a legitimate reason equally to your employees, you could still be in court. As you now know, sacking a jobholder is not just saying 'you're fired'. If this isn't the jobholder's first warning, then you must state on the warning form, what warning it is and what the proper action will be if they continue to cause difficulties at the company. If you do, expect a improper lay off suit with a big jury award. (I've included a cover note template in the jobholder Separation Toolkit at the end of this book. It's true a worker should know what the guideline is before layoff. First, detailing violations of company policy tells the personnel you mean business. Also, if the misbehavior or lackluster performance occurs occasionally, don't use progressive discipline. COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985. In particular, we don't always have documentation, we don't always lay off for a legal reason and laid off workers will often sue us for bogus reasons. Even when the action becomes necessary through no fault of the employee, both the decision making method and the act of firing are not pleasant duties.