Failure to attend performance review meeting letter

You can use our letter where an employee has failed to turn up for a formal performance review meeting. This usually happens when they refuse to face up to their poor performance.

A re-arranged meeting

Any performance management sanction, or capability-related dismissal, must be fair. A key part of this is the formal performance review meeting, which is when the employee has the opportunity to discuss their poor performance issues with you, and what measures could be put in place to help them improve their performance, before you take your decision on what performance management sanction (if any) to impose. If the employee asks in advance to postpone the meeting due to their sickness absence, annual leave or for another good reason, you should do so and rearrange it for a later date - see our Letter Rescheduling Performance Review Meeting. However, if the employee has simply failed to turn up to the meeting without giving you any reason for their non-attendance, it’s still advisable to rearrange it because you shouldn’t make any assumptions on the reason for their absence and so it would be fair to give them at least another chance to attend. In this situation, use our Failure to Attend Performance Review Meeting Letter.

Acas Code

The Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, which applies to poor performance as well as misconduct, says that “where an employee is persistently unable or unwilling to attend a disciplinary meeting without good cause the employer should make a decision on the evidence available”. This also covers formal performance review meetings. As such, it envisages that you can press ahead with the meeting in the employee’s absence, but only once they’ve shown themselves to be persistently unable or unwilling to attend. This indicates you ideally need to have tried to hold the meeting on at least two occasions.

Letter contents

Our letter notes that the employee failed to attend the performance review meeting without requesting that it be rescheduled and without providing any reason for their non-attendance. It then goes on to emphasise the importance of their having the opportunity to explain their position on why they’re not performing properly and to put forward any mitigating circumstances and it warns what the potential outcome of the meeting might be, i.e. a poor performance warning or dismissal, as appropriate. Finally, it reschedules the meeting for an alternative date and time and warns the employee that it’s unlikely you’ll postpone it again unless there are exceptional circumstances. So, if they fail to show up again without good reason, the meeting will then go ahead in their absence. Making two attempts to hold the meeting should be sufficient to show you’ve acted fairly. If the employee doesn’t turn up again and you go ahead with the meeting in their absence, do take a full attendance note of it, setting out what documents you considered, what measures you explored to assist the employee, etc.