‘A warning without an opportunity to improve is effectively not a warning at all,’ says lawyer
“A warning without an opportunity to improve is effectively not a warning at all - if an employer issues a verbal or written warning, or a final warning, there has to be a meaningful opportunity for the employee to actually take action.”
So says Wilson Chan, an employment and labour lawyer at Mathews Dinsdale in Calgary, after an Alberta court ruled that an employer didn’t have just cause to fire a worker for poor performance, dishonesty, or insubordination without warnings or giving the worker an opportunity to correct his ways.
Zimco Instrumentation is a small company that distributes instrumentation products such as valves, gauges, transmitters and pumps to customers in the oil and gas industry. The worker, now 43, was hired in 2010 to be a product specialist, processing quotes for potential customers and answering customer inquiries and purchase orders.
In June 2017, Zimco issued the worker a written warning about unsatisfactory performance and a failure to complete work assignments in a reasonable amount of time. The warning stated that the corrective action would be monthly meetings with management to review his progress.
The worker had a performance review in March 2021 that identified three areas to improve – significantly increase order volumes to team averages, significantly increase quotation volume, and discuss daily task prioritization with his supervisor. However,...
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