A little bit of faith restored in NZ

[Finn]

About 10 month's ago I had to let go of a senior person at work. This guy was one of those textbook corporate wankers with some letters after his name that I thought I needed in the Company. Wrong. We endured 12 months of bullshit and the only outcome was a whole lotta money down the toilet and some upset clients.

So I did the old "Don't come Monday" following the employment guidelines for getting rid of dead beats. Unfortunately, he was a lefty and so too is the ERA.

The short of it was that I had to reinstate him on garden leave for 2 months. I then had the usual wrongful dismissal, loss of earnings, stress and the usual bullshit. After 10 months off numerous mediation and hearings and a $30,000 legal bill, we won on all accounts.

So not only does this shit head have to pay us back 2 months salary, he also has to pay us a large percentage of our legal costs.

I never thought we would win everything and am quite surprised at the outcome. The person that handled the case from the ERA was superb. Still, it angers me that I had to go through this process in the first place. Like most laws, they are made for a very small percentage of scumbags, but the rest of us pay the price.

So it’s back to business. The firings will continue until moral improves.

Off to buy a new bike with the money.

[Wasp]

damn... sucks to be him.....

[Finn]

damn... sucks to be him.....

He brought this on himself. I'm hoping he will learn a great deal out of this, but I doubt it.

[Harry33]

Yip getting rid of people isn't easy, if only it was like "The Aprentice".

[Blackbird]

Good on you Finn, it's something I've had to face once in our company with a lefty union delegate and the stress was unbelievably bad - took 2 years to finally put it all to bed with various appeals. You have my admiration for seeing it through.

[Freakshow]

well done Finn glad there is still away to get rid of the usless

[skelstar]

Good on ya!...which bike?

[kickingzebra]

?!? Holy crap?! The same ERA that fined one of my mates 5 k for firing someone who threatened to kill him and his family?! (after the usual police no show)

Congratulations! About to start the staff culling process... Not looking forward to it!

[dnos]

on ya mate, good to hear that it can work out the way it should.
And i think going to spend that money on a new bike is a fricken good idea.

[steved]

Current favourite technique is redundancy yeah? Gets a bit tricky to make it fly when they are in a pretty pivotal role though, for example, a sales manager.

[RantyDave]

This guy was one of those textbook corporate wankers with some letters after his name that I thought I needed in the Company. Wrong.

Sesame Street was bought to you today by the letters "M", "B" and "A".

So I did the old "Don't come Monday" following the employment guidelines for getting rid of dead beats.

Sadly this is just not the kind of thing you can do. You have to have a series of meetings stating how the useless wanker is not performing against his stated performance objectives. You must offer counselling. Training. Time and patience so the employee may finally decide to amend their ways. While this might be fine when you've promoted a shelf stacker to checkouts and poor performance is because they don't know how to operate the till, it doesn't really apply to senior management on north of $100k/year. Or, rather, it shouldn't.

Well done on winning it, BTW. Normally telling someone to get farked costs upwards of $30k.

Like most laws, they are made for a very small percentage of scumbags, but the rest of us pay the price.

Employment laws in New Zealand are extra damaging because they discourage employment in marginal cases. Product based startups that are skint as all hell for the first two years can be killed outright (and damn nearly instantly) by hiring the wrong first or second employee. Likewise the recently graduated, moving from a different field, or those from a group that are traditionally discriminated against find it extra hard to get "in" because it's actually illegal for employers to write a "give it a go" period into contracts. Bizarrely the legislation that would make it easier for employers to employ in a "give it a go" fashion was blocked by the Maori party. So, only pakeha computer geeks with two years in the industry it is then.

Dave

[RantyDave]

Current favourite technique is redundancy yeah? Gets a bit tricky to make it fly when they are in a pretty pivotal role though.

Quite. A few weeks back I was hoofed in a rather disgraceful fashion from a company I helped save. In order to make this happen in a halfway legal fashion the board decided that the entire software development side of the company was going to be outsourced from now on and the roles of technical director, and any software engineers we happen to employ were all redundant.

So now we have a software company that is unable to employ either a technical director or anyone who can write software. They're going to need another round of investment soon, too - should be good for a laugh.

Dave

[steved]

Quite. A few weeks back I was hoofed in a rather disgraceful fashion from a company I helped save. In order to make this happen in a halfway legal fashion the board decided that the entire software development side of the company was going to be outsourced from now on and the roles of technical director, and any software engineers we happen to employ were all redundant.

So now we have a software company that is unable to employ either a technical director or anyone who can write software. They're going to need another round of investment soon, too - should be good for a laugh.

Dave

Seems like a strange decision. Where is the board planning on taking the company?

[Paul in NZ]

Seems like a strange decision. Where is the board planning on taking the company?

The cleaners is a popular destination place for boards to take companies these days ....

[Paul in NZ]

So it’s back to business. Off to buy a new bike with the money.

Thats not a brutal enough lesson for this idiot. Why not buy a new bike for some poor soul from Wellington as a demonstration of your contempt for him... Fortunately for you, I just happen to know a deserving case....