Dismissing employee in probationary period....

To add to Peter's advice:

Don't worry about being delicate. Be clear. Be unambiguous. Be humane. But articulate "it's just really not working out" in terms that are actually helpful. For example:

- You've managed to annoy every member of your team and none of them wants to work with you.
- You've been late to the office 3 days out of 5 for the last month.
- You don't actually have the skills you claimed to have in your interview (common one, this) and we don't have the time or the budget to get you up to speed.

I've had a few occasions when a manager has wanted to get rid of a new hire quite quickly and so I've pushed back for them to be explicit about why. Very occasionally it's because the manager is actually racist or sexist and isn't comfortable working with the employee. On those occasions, hard words have been had. More often it's because they actually wanted someone who already knew everything about our company, our market, our industry and our internal working practices and can't be bothered to wait for the new hire to get up to speed/aren't happy having their habits challenged/are convinced that the magical work fairy will bring them the perfect candidate if they just throw enough money at agents.

Most of the time when they have a legitimate reason to get rid of someone early it's actually because, basically, the hire lied in interview: "Oh, sure, I'm a whizz with [insert software platform name here]" or "Yes, I definitely have this qualification". Hiring was done in a bit of rush and time wasn't made to do pre-employment checks or do competence tests. In those cases, it's a lot easier to justify a dismissal.

To add to Peter's advice:

Don't worry about being delicate. Be clear. Be unambiguous. Be humane. But articulate "it's just really not working out" in terms that are actually helpful. For example:

- You've managed to annoy every member of your team and none of them wants to work with you.
- You've been late to the office 3 days out of 5 for the last month.
- You don't actually have the skills you claimed to have in your interview (common one, this) and we don't have the time or the budget to get you up to speed.

I've had a few occasions when a manager has wanted to get rid of a new hire quite quickly and so I've pushed back for them to be explicit about why. Very occasionally it's because the manager is actually racist or sexist and isn't comfortable working with the employee. On those occasions, hard words have been had. More often it's because they actually wanted someone who already knew everything about our company, our market, our industry and our internal working practices and can't be bothered to wait for the new hire to get up to speed/aren't happy having their habits challenged/are convinced that the magical work fairy will bring them the perfect candidate if they just throw enough money at agents.

Most of the time when they have a legitimate reason to get rid of someone early it's actually because, basically, the hire lied in interview: "Oh, sure, I'm a whizz with [insert software platform name here]" or "Yes, I definitely have this qualification". Hiring was done in a bit of rush and time wasn't made to do pre-employment checks or do competence tests. In those cases, it's a lot easier to justify a dismissal.