Dismissal from Sky due to customer cancellations?

[Sinny]

Hello all,

I'm posting this on behalf of my cousin in-Law who is a fully qualified sky engineer.

He has recently attended a performance meeting at Sky in which he has been informed he is under performing and not reaching all of his installation targets.

He has been informed that unless there is significant improvement in the next 6 weeks, he will be loosing his job.

He is currently at a loss regarding how he can improve his performance when these circumstances are out of his control, as the under performing is reliant on customer cancellations.

He currently receives on average 4 cancellations a week - and Sky mark this against him.

Other situations which are marked against him include call outs where he cannot physically install the Sky due to tree's blocking signal -In these situations he has to advise the customer to get a tree surgeon out before he can continue with the installation.

Other examples include Grade A listed buildings where he cannot legally perform his installation, and occasions where the client simply wishes to re-book, or instances where the client forgets to contact him personally for maintenance and instead they call Sky H.O and get a different engineer out.

All of this is going against him, yet I agree with him - He cannot control ANY of these instances.

Does anybody have any advice?

Many Thanks.

[Eloise01]

Re: Dismissal from Sky due to customer cancellations?

Two questions - no three - before I can say anything:

1) Does he actually work for Sky? Every engineer I have ever met is self-employed / sub-contracted or something similar.

2) If he does work for Sky (if he doesn't it isn't relevant) - since when and for how long?

3) Are other engineers operating under the same performance requirements?

[Sinny]

Re: Dismissal from Sky due to customer cancellations?

Two questions - no three - before I can say anything:

1) Does he actually work for Sky? Every engineer I have ever met is self-employed / sub-contracted or something similar.

2) If he does work for Sky (if he doesn't it isn't relevant) - since when and for how long?

3) Are other engineers operating under the same performance requirements?

Thanks for your reply.

Yes he is actually employed by Sky, he's been there 4 years and started as an apprentice.

All other engineers have the same targets, and are in a similar situation.

[Eloise01]

Re: Dismissal from Sky due to customer cancellations?

In that case his position is weak. Not impossible but very weak. Everyone is in the same boat - they may not be able to control all the cancellations, but they are all being treated in the same way and according to the same targets. The law is not concerned with targets - it cannot decide what is a reasonable target and what isn't, and has no right to do so. That is up to the employer to decide. So he would need to be able to evidence that others are in the same position as him, or worse, and the same disciplinary action is not being taken against them. I also think that the employer is being somewhat precipitate if they intend to dismiss based on a single warning about performance, but that is a matter that is arguable and so it would be up to a tribunal to determine whether this was fair or not - it's impossible to call it without knowing all the circumstances. One thing that he must ensure he does is to explain the circustances of each cancellation to his employer and ask how he could change this situation or improve on his performance in this respect. I assume he has already done so in the meeting, but he should be doing so again and asking the employer to provide support and/or training in order to address this problem.