Employment-At-Will Doctrine

1. When hiring someone for a position, one of the most significant qualification the employer looks at is his or her skills, competence, and abilities to do the job. The employer mainly relies on the information provided by the potential employee to determine if the employee is qualified for the job. In this situation, where Jennifer has led the employer to believe that she is qualified while not being able to fulfill the simple requirements of the job, negatively affects the employer who could hire a more efficient and better employee. Also given this is an accounting firm, the firm has responsibilities to the customer and if Jennifer is doing tax papers for a customer who may now be affected by her lack of abilities, the firm may get into legal dilemmas.

The first step is always to train the employee. In this case, where she was given training and support, I will first make sure the training and support is documented. Then I will provide her with an official document stating my concerns of her inability to do the job and a warning of termination if she is not able to improve within a given period of time. These preventive measures would reduce any risk or liability to the company and help us avoid any legal implications.

If Jennifer does not show improvement in the allotted time and assuming she is not able to perform any other non-computer related tasks in the office, I will have to terminate her based on the employment-at-will doctrine. Jennifer is obligated to provide true information about her skills. Jennifer may fight back stating that per contract of employment, I did not use “good faith and fair dealing” (Halbert & Ingulli, 2012) and she did not technically lie by stating that she is a “good worker and a genius” since this does not imply if she is a good computer user or not. This would not hold in court given that I was led to believe that she is right for the job by implying that she is more than capable to do the job. As a manager, it is my responsibility to look out for the interest of the company and customer and if I intentionally keep someone who cannot do the job, then there are ethical and legal issues in play here given that I am not looking in the interest of the company or the customer.

2. In this situation, to be able to fire Jennifer using the employment-at-will doctrine, it is important to document Jennifer’s behavior to make sure there are not legal implications based on the Tort law if I fire her. I would first make sure our company policies state that coming to work late or inappropriate behavior such as rage against employees is not tolerated. Assuming that it is, I would tell her to review and sign a written statement that she has reviewed the policy. I would also provide her with a warning document stating how she continues to come to work late and how her rage is negatively impacting her co-workers and not “beneficial to society in general” and that if she does not fix