Explanation for Employers Need to Document Their Reasons for Terminations when Employment is At-Will

There may be a question that bother a manger is that they need to worry about documentation when terminating employees since everyone is an employee-at-will.

The core to answer this question is the employment law 101.
So let’s make it again that what is employment-at-will? It means that you can employ or fire an employee for any reason or even without any reason. But we should make it clear that there is a prescription the reason is not unlawful..

Here comes the problem. Many employees who have been terminated will claim that their termination was unlawful because it was discriminatory based upon their protected class .

As we know, there are only five protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991: wit, sex, color, race, national origin and religion. In addition, each state usually has a larger number of protected classes than under federal law such as citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, etc. So what most terminated employees do is claim that the reason they were terminated was discriminatory based upon one or more of these protected classes such as race, age, disability, etc.

How then can an employer protect its self against such claims? The answer is documentation. So before employers fire employees, they should have evidence the termination is result from the poor performance of the employees.

The best way for an employer to demonstrate this is with disciplinary warning letters stating that the employee has not comply with the regulations of company. But this is not enough; employers should provide the employee every possible opportunity to improve his performance until he refuses to change.

So this is the reason that although employees are employees-at-will, employers still have to document the reasons that the employees are being terminated.