Also, the firm downturn gives you a legitimate excuse for separating Sue. A worker termination notice should contain certain elements. If you make reasonable accommodations and the worker still can't do the job, you can still terminate her for bad performance. If your small company's securities trade publicly and the terminated worker was an officer or director of the firm, you should tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gross misconduct and worker problems go hand in hand. Doing so will decrease or eliminate the possibility of that employee's sowing seeds of discord among other workers, getting them to "side with him" to the state labor board that no policy was ever mentioned. In the worst case scenario, the manager would humiliate the sacked employee and the rest of the staff would support them and begin to despise the whole scenario.

Document the effects this behavior has on your small business. Finally, private investigators are useful when you don't have the time to look into it yourself. It is far better to be safe than sorry when dealing with potentially problem workers. If not, say something like, "Sherry, are you listening to me? It's a natural part of grieving and the coworkers are not disloyal. If the worker fails to upgrade as the result of progressive discipline, you'll have built up enough of a case to separate the jobholder without risk of facing a legal action. Then you and the jobholder must come up with a plan to fix these issues. As a result, you won't have just one insubordinate worker - you will have an entire firm filled with them.