Employee

Employer

Anonymised Parties

A Loyalty Sales Advisor

A Television Channel

Representatives

A Community Support Worker 

Michael McGrath, IBEC

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

CA-00056970-001

02/06/2023

The employee starting work with this employer on August 15th 2022 as a loyalty sales advisor.  Her job was to handle incoming calls from customers who wanted to cancel their subscriptions to the TV channel and to persuade them not to cancel.  She worked for 20 hours a week, and her annual salary was €13,441.

The employee was on probation for six months until February 15th 2023; however, her probation was extended for three months.  The employee was dismissed on May 12th 2023, just before her extended probation expired.  She claims that her dismissal was unfair.  As she had less than one year of service at the time of her dismissal, she has submitted her case for investigation under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act 1969.

At the opening of the hearing, the employee gave a background to the circumstances that led to her being dismissed on May 12th 2023.  When she started in the job, she spent six weeks on classroom-type training and then another six weeks on what is known as “academy” training, before starting work on the job with support from a co-worker.  During her first six months in her job, the employee said that someone close to her died and she was absent on compassionate leave.  She said that she was asked to come in on her days off so that she could complete her training and she agreed to this.

At her probation review meeting in February, there was a discussion about January targets which had dropped, but she was told that this wasn’t unusual.  She thought that she would pass her probation, but it was extended until May 15th.  She was put on a performance improvement plan for four weeks, but this couldn’t start immediately because her partner was hospitalised with meningitis.  The employee said that her partner takes care of her two children while she is at work and, when he was in hospital, she had no one to mind them.  She said that her manager told her to take whatever time she needed to look after her family.  She took family emergency leave for three weeks and then she got Covid 19 and a bladder infection and she was absent for a further week.  The employee was isolating at home when she had Covid-19 and the medical cert she sent to the company had the wrong dates.  She had to get her sister to get another cert from her doctor so that she could send it in with the correct dates.  

When she recovered from Covid-19 and returned to work, the employee said that she started her four-week performance improvement plan.  She had one to one meetings with her line manager.  At the end of the first week, she didn’t achieve the required statistics and her manager gave her a lower target.  At the end of the four-week plan, around the middle of April 2023, another meeting was scheduled and she was asked if a group of around six people could sit in on the meeting and she agreed to this.  She said that she felt that the meeting went well and she recalled that her manager said that she had taken her advice about how to manage calls and that she was proud of her.

On the same day that the employee had the probation meeting, she said that her manager had a meeting with her line manager.   The employee’s manager then told her that her probation was up the next week and that things weren’t looking good.  The next day, the manager told the employee that her probation wasn’t up for another month.  The employee had holidays left to take before the end of the leave year and her son was making his first communion and she arranged to take four days’ holidays.  The day before she went on holidays, the employee said that her line manager told her that if the end of probation meeting was to be held that day, it was unlikely that she would pass.  If she was absent on holidays, there would be no statistics to measure her performance.  The employee said that she got very distraught and she was panicking.  She told her line manager that she felt that she had put a lot into the job, achieving awards as the most valuable person on the team and being on the wall of fame.  She was nominated as the broadband boss, and she said that her statistics were 2% ahead of the target on her floor.

The employee said that she joined the company in the hope of having a career, but that she ended up mentally drained as a result.  She said that when others were working from home, she came to the office every day because her manager suggested that this might help her to pass her probation.  She said that she thought that she did well in the job, but that she sees now that she was getting mixed messages.  She said that she has been left feeling unable to go back to a work environment and she feels that the company could have had more understanding for what she was going through, with having experienced a bereavement and her partner’s illness.  She said that her dismissal had an impact on her eldest child, who was afraid that if she lost her job, they would be homeless, because she had experienced homelessness with him previously.

At the end of the hearing, the employee said that she thought that she would have got more support to do her job, and she described the offers available to her to retain customers.  She said that she found the job difficult, but that she didn’t want to give up.  She said that perhaps some support other than listening to her doing her calls might have helped.

Setting out the employer’s case, Mr McGrath referred to the classroom type training for six weeks and the academy training that the employee engaged in before starting properly into the job after 12 weeks.  He said that, after 12 weeks, employees are supported and are not given full targets.  Between October 2022 and May 2023, Mr McGrath said that the employer had 36 performance-related interventions with the employee.  Although the employee wasn’t meeting her targets when her probation was up after six months, her line manager advocated for it to be extended for three more months.  A performance support plan was put in place when she came back from being out sick and further one-to-one meetings were held during March and April 2023.

Mr McGrath referred to the employee’s comments on the one-to-one meetings which indicated that she appreciated her line manager’s support.  He also referred to the record of statistics showing the employee’s achievements in March and April, which show that she did not meet many of the targets she was required to achieve.  Mr McGrath said that the employee was always aware that she wasn’t meeting her targets.

Mr McGrath also referred to the employee’s high level of absence, on top of emergency leave, which could have contributed to her not gaining the experience needed to become more proficient at the job.

In summary, Mr McGrath said that the employee’s line manager was supportive and communicated clearly with her regarding her targets.  The employee’s probation was extended in the anticipation that more experience would result in her meeting the targets.  She participated in one-to-one reviews at which her manager explained to her what was needed to meet the targets.  Unfortunately, despite the line manager’s efforts, the employee didn’t achieve what was required to keep her in the job.

The nine months that ended with the dismissal of this employee was a very tough time for her and her family.  I think that many other others in the same circumstances would have given up, but, to her credit, she continued to travel to work on the opposite side of the city from her home, to do a job that she had never done before so that she could be the wage-earner in her family.

The job of loyalty sales advisor is difficult.  It involves trying to change people’s minds when they want to cancel their TV package, and, for most workers who have a choice about where to work, this is not the top of a list of sought-after jobs.  It is also highly measured, with every phone call resulting in a pass or fail.

I understand the employee’s contention that she was given mixed messages regarding how she was getting on.  On one hand, she was an “MVP” – most valuable person on her team, a “broadband boss” and on the “wall of fame.”  On the other hand, the assessment that mattered most, her metrics, were mostly red, and this resulted in her dismissal at the end of her extended probation.

Having listened to both sides at the hearing on September 27th, it seems to me that the employee’s line manager was fair and supportive, and she gave her a chance by extending her probation for three months after February 15th.  It is my view that the ongoing imposition of challenging targets would have been detrimental to the employee’s well-being and that the decision to terminate her employment was reasonable, but very distressing for her.

For women trying to manage work and families, an illness or a crisis can tip them out of work and into unemployment.  For this employee, the demands of the job were too much at the time.  I observed at the hearing that she is intelligent, articulate and clear-thinking and I would encourage her to try again to find a job that suits her skills, where she will make a valuable contribution in a different workplace. 

This employee has raised an important issue regarding the messaging given to people who are not successful during their probation.  I recommend that the employer gives some consideration to how they communicate with employees who are not achieving the required targets, so that they have a clear understanding that the likely outcome of not achieving those targets is dismissal.  A clear and unambiguous message gives some power back to the employee and enables them to decide for themselves, in advance of dismissal, if the job is right for them in the long term.

Dismissal during probation