The 7 “Common Sense” Staff Habits That Put Your Business at Risk

Habit 1: You gave them the same yearly increment as everyone else, even though their work had dropped

The situation. Year end, and you are working out increments and bonuses. Maybe you run a proper appraisal form. Maybe you just sit down with the payroll and decide. Either way, one person has been sliding all year, you know it, and so does everyone working next to them.

You also know what happens if you say it out loud. A long face. A bad mood on the floor for two weeks. Maybe they walk out this month, and nobody else can run that station, that machine or that route. So you tahan it for one more year. They get the same increment as everybody else, and you promise yourself the real talk later.

Why you did it. This is not weakness and it is not bad management. You were protecting the team from a month of bad feeling and buying yourself time to think. Almost every boss I speak to has done this at least once, usually with someone they actually like.

Put it the way the Court will put it to you. Three months ago you said this person's work was good enough that you raised their pay. Today you say the work was never good enough. Which of those two was true?

There is an answer to that, and it is the only one that works: you show that things changed after the increment, and you show it in writing. A dated record of what was expected, what actually happened, what you told them, and what chance you gave them to fix it.

So the rule is simple. Unless you have a Performance Improvement Plan with real records behind it, do not fire them for performance. Without that, your own increment is the strongest piece of evidence in the room, and it is on their side.

“But it is my company. Surely I can decide who gets an increment.” You can, and nobody will stop you. The problem is not the money you gave. It is the sentence you signed next to it. Give the increment if you want to keep the peace this year. Just do not tick a box saying the work was fine when it was not.

What to do instead. Be honest on the form, then run a proper Performance Improvement Plan, a PIP, and write down every step of it.

• Write the true appraisal. If the work is below standard, the form says so, even when that makes the meeting harder.
• Put the standard in numbers. Not “improve attitude”. Something you can point at: “closing checklist done before you lock up”, “stock count in by the third of the month”, “quotations out within two working days”, “no more than two customer complaints a month”.
• Put the PIP in writing and give them a copy. What must improve, by how much, and by what date.
• Meet them every week during the PIP, and write down what was said each time. Both of you sign it.
• Give real help, not just a warning. Training, a checklist, someone to sit with them. A PIP that offers nothing looks like a countdown, and it reads that way to everyone else too.
• At the end, write down the decision and the reason for it, whether they passed or not.

A PIP is good management rather than a legal requirement, and no fixed number of weeks is written into any Act. What it gives you is a record showing you told them, you gave them a fair chance, and you helped.

Habit 3: You let someone go during probation because they were not the right fit

The situation. Two months in, the new person is not what the interview promised. The work comes back cincai, you are checking things you should not have to check, and the rest of the shift has quietly started working around them.

Your thinking is simple, and almost every boss shares it. Probation is there so both sides can find out if this works. It has not worked. So you pay in lieu of notice, let them go, and start looking again.

Why you did it. Because that is what everybody thinks probation means, including the person you hired. Nobody told you otherwise when you started the business. And the other option looks like keeping someone who is wrong for the job, just to be safe.

Industrial Relations Act 1967, section 20 and the Second Schedule.

To be clear, you can still not confirm somebody. Non-confirmation at the end of probation is a real and normal thing to do, and this guide is not telling you to keep everybody you hire. What decides whether it holds up is not the decision. It is the reason you wrote down.

“Not the right fit” is not a reason. It cannot be checked, argued against or answered, and it tells anyone reading your file nothing about what happened.

Write what actually went wrong. Compare these to “not the right fit”:

• Cannot finish the work in the time the job needs. Give the dates and what was late.
• Still cannot do the task alone after being shown three times. Say when, and by whom.
• Cannot communicate clearly enough for the role. Give the example, such as taking customer orders wrongly twice in one week.
• Cannot work with the team for a specific reason, such as refusing to hand over at shift change, or not passing on messages. Name the incident, not the personality.

Every one of those is checkable. That is the whole difference.

And the part nobody expects. Most bosses go vague on purpose. You write “not the right fit” because it feels kinder than telling somebody they were too slow, and you think you are letting them keep their dignity.

I understand it, and it usually backfires. The person walks out with no idea what went wrong, so they fill in the blank themselves, and what they fill in is usually worse than the truth. They decide you never liked them. Then they go to JPPM to find out why, and your file has nothing in it to explain the decision either.

Being specific in the file is not cruelty. You can still be gentle in the room. Being clear is being kind.

“Then what is probation even for?” A fair question, and the answer is not nothing. Probation is your window to find out quickly, decide early, and end it while the reasons are small, recent and written down. Used properly it is still the cheapest and cleanest exit you will ever have with a staff member. You just have to actually use it. The Vault has the non-confirmation notice itself, with the checklist of what to settle before you sign it.

What to do instead.

• On day one, decide what the first three months have to produce, and put it in the offer letter or a one-page probation memo.
• Meet them regularly. Ten minutes every week is worth more than an hour at the end.
• Write down what was discussed, and keep it short. The date, what was expected, what happened, and what they said about it.
• Make the decision before the probation date drifts past. Put it in the diary now, because letting that date pass in silence is also a decision, and it is not the one you meant to make.

Be honest with yourself about what this actually buys you, though. Records are evidence, not armour. They do not guarantee an outcome, and nothing does. What they give you is a story of what happened that matches your own documents. That is a lot more than most bosses have on the morning the letter arrives.

Habit 5: You want to write “bad attitude” in a warning letter

The situation. The sighing every time you ask for anything. The tone in front of customers. The way a simple request turns into an argument in front of the whole shift. Everyone has noticed, two people have quietly mentioned it to you, and you have run out of patience.

You have already buat tak tahu for months and it has not gone away. So you want it on record. And when you sit down to write the letter, the words that come out are “bad attitude”, because that is what the problem feels like from where you sit.

Why you did it. Because it is real. You are not imagining the mood and you are not being too sensitive. Someone who makes every small thing harder is a real problem for the business, and pretending otherwise would be bad management too.

Employment Act 1955, section 14.

Turn it around for a moment. If somebody handed you a letter saying your attitude was poor, what exactly would you do differently on Monday morning?

Name the actual charge. There is almost always a real one sitting underneath the attitude, and it has a proper name. Use that instead:

• Insubordination. A clear, lawful instruction was given and they refused to carry it out. Say what the instruction was, who gave it, and when.
• Rudeness to a customer. Give the date, what was said, and who heard it.
• Refusing to follow a rule they were told about. Name the rule and the day they were told.
• Not turning up, or turning up late, with the dates.
• Poor work, which is a performance problem and not misconduct at all. That one goes down the Habit 1 route, not this one.

If you go through that list and none of them fit, that is worth knowing too. It may mean you have someone unpleasant to be around who is not actually doing anything wrong, and no letter fixes that. It may also mean the real problem is the one in the boss-to-boss note below.

Then write down what a camera in the corner of the room would have recorded.

• The date and the time it happened.
• What was said or done, in their own words where you have them.
• The rule or instruction it went against, and when they were told about it.
• The effect it had on the work, the customer or the shift.
• Then ask them to explain themselves, and write down what they tell you.

Do that properly once and you very often do not need to do it a third time.

“So I just have to put up with it?” No. You are allowed to be hard on the work. Set the standard, say it out loud, write down what actually happens, and act when it happens again. What you cannot do is punish someone for how they make you feel. Name the conduct and you can deal with all of it. Name the mood and you can deal with none of it.

There are two limits here that I would rather state than let you assume. I am not going to give you a line in this guide where ordinary irritation becomes misconduct, because that turns entirely on facts I cannot see from here. And please do not issue an instruction you did not actually need, purely so that ignoring it becomes insubordination. A trap of that kind is visible from a long way away, and it puts you in the wrong on paper in a way that is very difficult to repair afterwards.

Habit 7: You did not pay overtime because the job title says “executive”

The situation. You have a marketing executive on RM3,800 a month who stays back through a campaign. You have a workshop supervisor on RM5,000 who does whatever the week needs, and an outlet supervisor who closes up long after the shutters come down. All of them have proper titles and flat monthly salaries, so you have always treated the salary as covering the job, however long it takes.

Nobody has ever raised it. Your own old boss did the same. It is how most businesses you know run.

Why you did it. Because that is what a monthly salary has always seemed to mean. And the other option looks like timesheets for the very people you hired so you would not have to watch the clock for them. It is a fair way to read it. It is just not how the Act reads it.

Employment Act 1955, section 60A and the First Schedule.

The title is not the test. The Employment Act covers any person who has entered into a contract of service, and earning above four thousand ringgit a month does not put somebody outside the Act. What it does is disapply a short, listed set of provisions, and section 60A(3), which sets the overtime rate at not less than one and a half times the hourly rate, is on that list. At RM3,800 your marketing executive is below the line altogether, so whatever the door says, the overtime provision applies to them.

The wage line is not the whole test either. The First Schedule covers some kinds of work no matter what the person earns:

• manual labour
• operating or maintaining a vehicle that carries passengers or goods
• supervising staff who are doing manual labour

So your workshop supervisor on RM5,000 may still be covered. Look at the work being done, not the pay slip and not the job title.

Paying somebody above the line does not switch off the clock. That list of switched-off provisions is closed, and the working hour limits in section 60A(1) are not on it. These stay, whatever anybody earns:

• Not more than 8 hours in a day.
• Not more than a 10 hour spread over. Spread over means the whole stretch from the time they start to the time they finish, breaks included.
• Not more than 45 hoursEmployment Act 1955, section 60A(1). These limits are not on the list that switches off above RM4,000. in a week.
• A break of at least 30 minutes after five hours straight.

What to do instead.

• Write the normal hours of work into the contract, because overtime is measured against that figure, and if the contract never states it you are arguing about the starting line before you argue about anything else.
• Require overtime to be requested and approved in writing beforehand. That is a sound management rule and you should have it. Just be clear about what it does: it controls when overtime is supposed to happen, and it is not a receipt proving that hours which were worked were not worked.
• Keep accurate records of hours, because when the question eventually comes, records are the only thing that answers it.
• Check the position person by person, against the work and the wage, rather than by job title.

“So now I have to put my executives on a punch card?” Not quite. You need to know the hours, which is not the same as policing them. Most businesses already have this somewhere: the door access log, the roster, the delivery app, the closing checklist with a time written on it. Start with what you already have before you buy anything.