What to Consider When Terminating an Employee in California

In California, managing a workforce and making personnel decisions can be a complex task that, if not done with care and due diligence, is full of potential risks.

In this episode of The Workplace podcast, CalChamber Associate General Counsel for Labor and Employment Matthew Roberts, CalChamber General Counsel for Labor and Employment Bianca Saad and CalChamber Employment Law Counsel Vanessa Greene walk through the analysis required when employers choose to let someone go or reorganize their workforce.

Roberts opens the podcast describing a common workforce management scenario: a recently hired employee is not meeting expectations for their job. The employer wants to either terminate the employee or eliminate their position through a reduction in force. However, this employee also has a protected class status, so the employer isn’t sure whether they can end the worker’s employment.

In the podcast, as Roberts, Saad and Greene go through how to handle this workplace management issue, they discuss:

• How California’s at-will employment generally means employees and employers can end employment at any time for any or no reason — except for unlawful reasons — and how employers still need to evaluate every termination decision factor to ensure there are no unlawful reasons for the decision to terminate.
• How an employee’s protected characteristic (also referred to as a protected class) affects termination decisions.
• Whether classifying the termination as a layoff or reduction in force gives employers more options for handling these situations.
• The need to document any performance discussions with the employee as well as the objective basis for the termination decision to demonstrate that it is based on a legitimate business reason and not unlawfully motivated.

Employers would benefit from implementing early performance management policies long before the termination decision comes up, such as being clear during hiring about the job’s expectations, providing adequate training once the worker is hired and setting clear job expectations with employees.

Once a worker is on the job, employers should be sure to communicate continually about any job issues as they arise so it doesn’t come as a surprise to the employee when the employer decides to terminate their employment.