# Workplace Surgery: Question 3 - Letting a star employee go

- **Episode:** [202](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/202.md) (2025-06-03)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** termination, star-employee, management
- **Time:** 51:45–58:25 (start 3105s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/202?t=3105](https://truthliesandwork.com/202?t=3105)

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[51:45] Al Elliott: Fabulous answer as always, my love. Okay, so question number 3, how do you let a star employee go when they've crossed the line? Oh no. I'm looking for some advice on what's turned into a really tricky situation. We've got an employee who's been a star performer for years, but honestly, one of the best we've ever had. But over the last 6 months, things have seemed to have unravelled a bit. It began with medical issues and family problems, and we've done everything we can to be supportive and accommodating. But then we discovered she'd been working a second job— naughty— for a competitor— double naughty— claiming she was working from home for us at the same time. We're a small team and this has created a massive workload for everyone else. We're at this crossroads. Do we fire her outright or try to encourage her to resign? We're obviously worried about potential fallout like unemployment claims, possible legal headaches, that sort of thing. And also a second question is, how do you balance what's fair for the team without turning this into a bigger problem? This is a fabulous question. Terrible situation, but it's great for us
[52:46] Leanne Elliott: Yeah. And I think particularly if you're a small business owner, I'm sure this superstar has played a major role in your growth and the loyalty you have to them is going to be, is going to be really strong. So it's going to be a hard situation. I'd imagine you're finding this situation really, really hard and really quite, quite upsetting. How you handle it is how you'd handle, um, the situation with any other employee, any other, um, misconduct that happens in your organisation. There is no difference because that is bias, and we can't do that, particularly in these situations. The first thing is going to be to look at your employment contract and see if there's actually something in there that says that this person isn't allowed to hold another full-time job with a competitor. Because if there isn't anything that explicitly says that in there, oh, it might be difficult. You can now work that back in, and it might be a lesson learned in terms of future contracts, or are we drafting everyone's contracts? But unless it says it specifically, and why would it? Because this isn't a problem that has been around very long. It's a very recent problem that some employers are faced with, this overemployment or moonlighting, whatever you want to call it. So, first of all, you're going to have to check your contract and see if that's actually there already. And then follow the process. You're going to have a disciplinary process in your organization, you need to by law phone ACAS if you're in the UK, a similar organization, um, they'll have them in, in the US, um, to see what the process is, what your legal rights are. It's going to be about collecting evidence, you collecting evidence, them collecting evidence as a defense, um, and making sure that everything is done above board. It sounds like you're going to come to the come to the conclusion that there is a case for gross misconduct here, and you, yeah, you, you fire this person, which is very sad. In terms of forcing a resignation, legally you're not allowed to do that, even though we know it happens a lot. We're not allowed to do that, really. Um, it has to be voluntary. Um, so yeah, very careful. Again, I'm not an HR professional, and there'll be, there'll be ways that you could potentially Um, I guess encourage this outcome, but really that, that's, that's not on the right side of the law. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that. I think the thing to remember in terms of this impact on the broader team, and that's a great question to ask, and this is more my wheelhouse than the kind of disciplinary process itself. For every toxic superstar you have, and this is what this person has become, More— they're probably not even as good as toxic superstar at this point because they're just toxic. They're a former superstar who is toxic. That has such an impact on your team. You'd need to probably hire like 3 or 4 more absolute superstars just to make up for the detrimental impact this person is having on your team's morale, performance, productivity. There is no coming back from it. There is no shielding your team from it. The fact that their workloads have gone up, that's one of the biggest biggest impacts on disengagement. If somebody has a high workload, it's one of the biggest— has one of the biggest impacts on wellbeing and stress. You're putting your team under immense amount of pressure, um, at huge risk to yourself because you could start to see these people leave. So, it's very important that you deal with this quickly. It's not tolerated. And if this person will remain in your organisation for whatever reason, it's limiting the impact they can have on the rest of the team. Very clear boundaries, very clear understandings of of how they are allowed to remain in the organisation and what the performance expectations are, and follow it to the book, and make sure this is communicated very transparently with the person involved. But I think for me, it would be get through this process as quickly, as effectively, as compliantly as possible. Hope that it's done in a couple of months and minimise the impact on the team. In the interim, if you do have the resources, if there's any way you can bring in some additional support, to pick up some of that extra workload, that would be a really positive and immediate action you could take to support the team. But yeah, tricky one, and I imagine it's emotional as well as it is kind of a process-led question. But I think, yeah, it comes down to you deal with this as you would anyone else in your organisation who is going through some form of misconduct investigation
[57:10] Al Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. And like Leanne said, it probably will be personal. Um, because, you know, this person is— the way you write about them is that they're, you know, they're very special and you admire them. So try and put that to one side. Just a quick— again, Leanne's more of an expert in HR than I am, and she admits it's not her wheelhouse, but just a thought that there may not be something in there saying you can't work another job or you can't work for our competitors, but there probably will be something in there around IP secrets, all that kind of stuff
[57:40] Leanne Elliott: Hours worked
[57:41] Al Elliott: Hours worked. That's probably the leverage. And in fact, the secrets thing. And the IP stuff, that's probably the paragraph you want to leverage here to get a nice clean break because it's almost indefensible, I would imagine. I would imagine. Lee, that was fantastic. Thank you so much. We're back next week unless we kicked out of Montenegro. We're back next week with another workplace surgery. We're also going to be back with obviously all the other stuff you heard today is the news roundup. We're coming back with the hot take. We're coming back with the clever and witty banter that happens just naturally between the two of us. And also in this slightly echoey room with what, uh, what we think is a pretty decent view, but it's not our view of our own backyard. But anyway, what can you do? Leanne, anything else to add before we let these lovely people go?