'You're fired!' just doesn't cut it in NZ, writes Steve Hart

Employment lawyer Michael Smyth says too many firms are hiring the wrong people because their job ads are full of unnecessary jargon.

Instead of describing a vacancy so they attract the person they really need, he says some employers are plagiarising chunks from other people's adverts, mixing it up with a few overused cliches and then bemoaning the fact the "passionate and dynamic individual" they've hired doesn't fit in with the firm's "supportive team environment".

And Smyth says firms are getting into trouble when they decide to remove the bad hire. He is certain that when it comes to staff not working out as expected, the problem can - in many cases - be traced back to the recruitment advertisement.

He devotes a whole chapter to getting the advert right in his new book, Employed But Not Engaged, written over the past 12 months.

"When I wrote the book, I thought I really needed to include a section on recruitment because the whole book is designed to help small business owners avoid getting into this problem," says Smyth.

"If you leave the recruitment side out of a book on employment law then it would leave a huge hole in the process."

The book looks at the employee/employer relationship as though it is a personal one and could be described as a marriage guidance book for managers and staff.

Smyth is a barrister who worked in Auckland law firm Buddle Findlay's employment division after arriving from Britain in 2001 on what he thought would be a one-year jaunt.

But his plan to return to London slipped away as he got to enjoy New Zealand's way of life.

He now runs his own legal practice in the areas of employment and sport, helping people with staffing problems and athletes dealing with issues such as drug test results and selection decisions. He markets himself as The Approachable Lawyer and does his best to take the stuffiness out of employment law.

Smyth says he wrote the 144-page paperback because of the number of cases he worked on that were down to an employer slipping up during the process of dismissing a member of staff. And it is the minor oversights, he says, that leave employers open to legal challenges from staff, followed by the expense of mediation and employment court hearings.

"It just struck me that if employers had gone through the [dismissal] process correctly then they wouldn't leave themselves open to problems."

Another common failing of employers, Smyth says, is heading into the disciplinary process having already decided on the desired outcome.

"The difficulty is that once you have decided to terminate someone from their employment - before you have gone through the process - then it becomes very obvious. While the law doesn't mean you have to go through a process that's like painting by numbers, there is a series of steps you have to take.