Redeployment offer after performance review meeting

Where you’re at the stage where you can dismiss an employee for ongoing poor performance, you should first consider whether to offer them available alternative employment to which they might be more suited.

Alternative to dismissal

Where you’ve been performance managing an employee under the terms of our Capability Procedure, and you’re at the dismissal stage having previously issued them with one or two performance warnings, as part of the general requirement to act reasonably you should first consider whether you could usefully deploy them, with their agreement, to another available role at the same or lower grade which is more suited to their skills and abilities. Our capability procedure contemplates that you will do this, as does our Final Warning of Poor Performance. You don’t have to go as far as creating a new role if you don’t have any vacancies, but you should consider what vacancies you do have and whether they’re within the employee’s capability levels, taking into account your performance management of them in their current role.

Less favourable terms

Any new role offered can be on less favourable employment terms, such as a reduced salary. This is likely to be the case if it’s a lower grade job, but you shouldn’t be using this as an opportunity to downgrade other terms and conditions of employment that wouldn’t ordinarily be affected. Unless there’s a right contained within the employee’s employment contract to impose a transfer to an alternative role as a performance management sanction, it’s not permissible to do this without the employee’s express consent. If you attempt to impose redeployment without either consent or a contractual right to do it, you risk the employee resigning and claiming constructive dismissal on the basis that you’ve committed a fundamental breach of their employment contract, even though you could have legitimately and fairly dismissed them for poor performance.

Redeployment letter

Our Redeployment Offer after Performance Review Meeting is an alternative to our Dismissal due to Poor Performance letter. It assumes you’ve held a formal performance review meeting with the employee and that you’re now at the stage where you would be entitled to dismiss them with notice on the ground of poor performance. However, to avoid that outcome, and as an alternative to dismissal, it offers them redeployment to another role which you believe is more suitable for them. We’ve assumed you’ll include a job description for the new role and two copies of an updated employment contract (or written statement of employment particulars) with the letter. If the employee is willing to accept your offer, they’re then asked to sign and return one copy of the updated contract (or written statement) to you and keep the other copy for their own records. If, however, they refuse your offer of redeployment, our letter warns them that the result will be their dismissal, i.e. the dismissal option is still very much a “live” one and hasn’t just gone away.