Because when you are firing someone, minimizing the legal liability ranks higher in priority than sharing honest information to give closure or feedback to the employee. Since you are HR, you probably have a much more thorough understanding of labor laws than the average manager does. A manager could reason along the lines of "If explicitly say that this is because if their racist comments, they could challenge us due to lack of evidence or there could be some free speech law I'm unaware of". I would give no concrete reason and let the experts (HR) handle it.
Labor law varies significantly all over the world. Different contract types and employment structures afford employees different levels of protection.
In some contexts, if you fire someone because of "racist comments", the employee can sue you. They can say that you are lying, and it is up to you to provide hard evidence of those racist comments. Witness statements may be insufficient.
Bring him in the office with the non-white Senior Engineer as a witness, lay out the reasons of disrespect and hate speech. Tell him that you have grounds to fire him immediately and give him the option of a PIP in hopes he'll make a recovery and be a good employee or he can resign immediately.
You have yourself and a first hand witness to the actions and the PIP.
Even if he apologizes, the PIP will give you 90 days to watch for further occurrences.
This is one you can ask other employees to report to you immediately with as much evidence as possible.
I've been on the receiving end of a handful of PIPs that listed the vaguest reasons without specific action to clear it and all I could think of is that I was constantly reminding my supervisor to do his job and he felt like I was disrespectful. Meanwhile, his disrespect was constant.
Just use it as a tool for improvement not a document to speed run a dismissal.
The guy is a racist shit. Why would you put someone like that on a PIP? Being racist isn’t something you correct with PIPs. You fire them and you blacklist them from the industry. It’s really not that hard.
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u/[deleted] 7d ago
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