Madam, – How many times do we hear Government and media commentators claim that “contractual issues” prevent senior people from being held accountable? To take just one recent example, the claim that individuals are “entitled” to payment in lieu of notice assumes that the contract has been carried out to the satisfaction of both parties to that contract.
The payment is to cover the notice period of the contract and is an alternative to simply allowing the employee to work out the notice period.
Senior bankers, politicians, civil servants and semi-state directors can hardly be held to have carried out their duties to the satisfaction of taxpayers. As an example from “normal life”: if your builder does not build the house, you do not have to honour the contract to pay him. The same applies to employment contracts.
In my corporate career in large global companies, I have had to remove many senior executives with big-notice entitlements; it was crucial to employee morale and commitment not to “have one law for the senior people and another for the rest” so I ensured no compensation was paid.
This is challenging, but boy does it reinforce accountability and performance. The key is to dismiss for conduct not with notice, the legal argument being that the conduct of the senior employee was so bad (“gross misconduct”) that it nullifies the contract and thus the obligations under it.
Our new Government needs to ignore feeble and conservative legal advice and dismiss for gross misconduct; any legal shortcomings can then be taken to the people in a referendum – which way do you think they would vote? – Yours, etc,