Preparation clears a pathway for success*

You’re in the battlefield with a member of staff. You don’t how it escalated so quickly or what to do next to avoid making matters worse.

They call in sick and you breathe a sigh of relief that you don’t have to face them at work for a while.

But the issue doesn’t go away. You still think about it throughout the day, at work and at home. It even gives you a few sleepless nights.

You receive a Fit Note for 4 weeks citing work-related stress as the reason for their absence.

Sh*t, who is going to do their work now?

You muddle on through, delegate some of their work, find mistakes and make a case for their redundancy to avoid having the difficult conversation with them.

But their role is not redundant and if you went down that route, you’d have to put other employees at risk that you don’t want to unsettle.

You get a grievance letter. Then an email making a ‘subject access request’. You haven’t got a clue what one of those is!

Then you get the ‘without prejudice’ letter from their solicitor telling you what a terrible employer you are and that you should pay your employee £10,000 not to sue you, which they are on standby to do.

You’re out of your depth and call in the cavalry to clean up this mess.

……But what if you had called them in before you had the conversation that sparked off this whole sh*tshow? Perhaps you could have saved yourself weeks, if not months, of stress and hassle.

Do the smart thing my friend; plan your strategy with an expert before you raise a contentious matter with your staff, and you’ll mitigate the risk of it all going horribly wrong for you and your business.

*Quote credit Ron Kaufman