Confirmation of no performance management sanction

Where you decide not to impose a performance warning or any other performance management sanction on an employee following a formal performance review meeting, you can use our letter.

No performance management sanction

Whilst the outcome of most formal performance review meetings will be to impose some form of performance management sanction on the employee under the terms of your Capability Procedure, such as a Warning or Final Warning of Poor Performance, occasionally it will be the case that no further action is to be taken and therefore the employee will receive no penalty in relation to their alleged poor performance. In this case, they should still be given confirmation of this in order to conclude the formal capability process.

No case to answer

If the employee isn’t to receive a performance management sanction, this is usually because either: (1) you decide that the employee’s poor performance is best dealt with on an informal basis instead rather than through the imposition of a formal warning, e.g. because it’s sufficiently minor or there are important mitigating factors; (2) the poor performance hasn’t been proved to your satisfaction; or (3) the employee has put forward a perfectly reasonable explanation for what at first appeared to be poor performance on their part, e.g. the problems are actually due to a lack of training or supervision or a failure of equipment. These scenarios are usually relatively rare, however, because normally a decision will have been taken that there is no case to answer during the investigation stage. A good investigation into poor performance issues should ensure that cases without merit, or cases that are best dealt with on an informal basis through counselling, are not taken to a formal performance review meeting in the first place. Our Confirmation of No Performance Management Sanction letter is for use in those few cases where no performance management sanction is to be imposed on the employee following a performance review meeting.

Letter content

Our letter confirms that you’re not going to be imposing a performance management sanction on the employee on this occasion. There are then two optional paragraphs. One is for use where it’s nevertheless accepted there’s a performance issue and so you’ve agreed that the employee should still strive to improve their performance levels so that they meet the standards you expect. It provides that you’ll continue to monitor them and warns that a failure to sufficiently improve is likely to lead to formal performance management action being instituted against them again. Do ensure that the employee understands what needs to be done here, how their performance will be monitored and over what period. The second optional paragraph is where you’ve agreed to provide the employee with additional training to help them improve their performance. It also asks them to contact you if they think there are additional ways in which you can help them improve. You should consider whether training, coaching or mentoring would assist the employee in improving their performance where their performance levels are failing to meet your expected standards.