Protect your company with a sound termination policy.

Terminating employees, particularly involuntarily, is a part of the job that most business owners and HR managers dread. Firing or laying off staff members is a tough decision, but it sometimes needs to be done due to misconduct or business changes. And when it does, it's vital to have a legally sound termination policy in place.

What to include in your company's termination policy

Your termination policy should restate and reinforce your at-will employment policy if you are in an at-will state. This is important as at-will employment allows employers to terminate employees without cause or warning if there are no illegal underlying reasons such as discrimination or retaliation for protected whistleblowing or complaint filings.

A termination policy is also an excellent place to lay out your expectations for employees who quit. Of course, an at-will policy goes both ways, so employees don't have to give notice in voluntary terminations. However, most people will as a courtesy to the business and to remain in good standing for references or rehire.

It can also be helpful to include a sample list of offenses that may lead to termination. However, it's important to state in the policy that this list is not fully comprehensive. You may run into unique situations in the future that necessitate immediate dismissal that you will not have predicted or thought to add to the list. The termination policy and disciplinary action policy will be somewhat connected and overlapping, so it can be helpful to position them close together in your employee handbook.

Some employers also list extra items such as the return of company property and processing of final payouts. These issues can also be addressed in separate company policies.

Information security measures

It's important to have procedures in place to protect company data when an employee departs. The IT department should have a process for deactivating employees' email accounts and any other company accounts that they may have. This prevents them from re-accessing them later and viewing information that they are no longer authorized to see or use.

That part should be more of a standard operating procedure for IT rather than a section of your termination policy, in most cases. However, many companies include a section either in their company property or termination policy that details the timeline and expectations for returning company property upon termination of employment. This is particularly...