Supplying a reference to a bad former employee

Question

Towards the start of this year, we had to fire someone I was managing due to (among other things) poor performance. We/I offered to supply a reference for ongoing employment. Their new company (I understand they've signed a contract already, for a somewhat related role) has now reached out for one, and addition to the usual questions about confirming employment dates they also have a bunch of questions about rating candidate performance, would I hire them again, etc. I gather from the form that these are standard questions for their process but I don’t think either me or the former employee were expecting it.

Constraints:

1. I don’t want to lie

2. I don't want to be mean to the former employee, while I don't think they were very good I have no animosity towards them

3. I don't think I can easily dodge this since last week they reached out to confirm that I was still OK to do this (obviously this was before I saw the form the new employer would send)

4. It's hard to write something generic because the employer's form is not free text but rather has specific questions as outlined above

5. I obviously don't want to do anything that could get my company (or me, I guess) into legal trouble - this is UK if that's relevant.

I have already asked my manager for advice and also written to our HR, plus asked friends/family who are not involved in the situation. I've yet to hear back from HR but a common suggestion has been to write to the former employee and confirm:

1. What they said about their departure from our company to the new employer, so as not to cause any problems.

2. Given the above constraints, whether they still want me to provide a reference (although if I don't I'm not sure what the new employer would make of it).

What would be the best course of action here?

Answer 1

There is the cop-out answer which is for all these questions write the following:

"Our company policy for references is to only confirm employment start and end dates and position"

(or some variation on that theme)

Standard form meet generic answer.

Answer 2

US resident here...I tend to lean toward the old saying, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." You can simply say that your company does not provide details regarding past performance evaluations. As far as whether you would hire him again, I recommend consulting with HR. Ask the question, "If this former employee applied for a job different to the one he had, but was qualified for, would he be eligible to be hired if chosen by the hiring manager?"

You're not saying anything that would jeopardize his position due to your responses, while protecting yourself and your organization by avoiding details. They've already hired him; let them do their own discovery. Maybe he will be a stellar employee, maybe he won't. What he won't be able to claim is not getting the chance to succeed or fail because of something his past employer said.

As a sidebar, the fact the hiring company is doing this type of investigation after hiring him speaks volumes about them. If they have trust issues, maybe they should do more homework on their applicants before offering them a position.

Answer 3

I've yet to hear back from HR but a common suggestion has been to write to the former employee and confirm: [...] What would be the best course of action here?

To wait for your HR's response and indications on how to proceed or handle this, so you are sure you are acting in a correct and legal way (or rather, you are not saying something that could put you in trouble).

Regarding writing to the former employee again and ask if they still want you as reference, it would seem that at this point (the new company already reached out to you) this is not possible anymore without raising some eyebrows and without you looking bad by taking back your offer to serve as reference on the last moment.

Another option is to just answer the questions you feel ok and capable to answer, as well as those that don't put you (and your company) on a tricky situation, like disclosing internal and probably confidential things like performance rating and other things.

In hindsight, it sounds that you offered to serve as reference out of courtesy, and not much because this is a person you would really recommend. In any case, keep your comments objective, professional and as neutral as possible.

Answer 4

Many companies only provide a minimum of information when giving a reference. They do this to protect themselves from the predicament that you are in.

You promised that you would go beyond the basic dates of employment, but were then shocked to discover that any questions beyond dates of employment would expect you to give an opinion.

I gather from the form that these are standard questions for their process but I don’t think either me or the former employee were expecting it.

The questions you were asked are not any different than ones you would be asked if the hiring company called you. These are the norm, if the hiring company can as the questions.

Even if you were writing a letter without prompts, the hiring company would be looking for these types of statements.

You need HR to tell you how to proceed.

Answer 5

I have been in a similar situation, in the UK - but about 15 years ago.

About 6 months after an employee was dismissed, I was contacted for a reference by an employer that had offered him a new role, subject to satisfactory references.

The company guidance I was given by my employer, was that if the reference was in writing, I had to stick to start date, end date, and a general summary of responsibilities and whether performance expectations were met, or not. However, references by telephone I was given the freedom to have a more open conversation, as long as I followed the basic rules about being honest, accurate and fair.

In the UK there is a general convention that you do not give a bad reference, but it is also legally important that you do not paint a dishonest overall impression by being selective in details that you share.

This is what I did.

Before agreeing to give a reference, I just said that there was a couple of issues that i need to handle fairly carefully about their reference, and asked if they could give me a short summary about what they had been told about why he ceased working for my team. From the couple of sentences they said, it was clear he had been open and honest with them, so the first issue that i had to handle carefully was handled by me confirming that how they described it was a fair and full description of the reason why he was dismissed - then I had a really good telephone conversation with his new manager about the challenges of being his manager.

Their main concern that they needed clarity on, was satisfied. I was able to confirm that their assessments of his strengths and weaknesses was in line with what i had experienced, and they seemed to be a better match for him as his employer than we had been. His main challenge was that his English was particularly poor, which meant that we struggled with both communication of work duties and on the job training to broaden his skills. He had solid Web Site development skills but struggled to pick up skills in the application development aspects that was 90% of our workload. The bits of Web Site tech that he did, was done efficiently and to a higher standard than anyone else on my team was able to achieve, even if my other team members were given considerably longer timeframes.

Would I have agreed to complete a questionnaire ranking system on them? Probably not. I would have said that with this specific person, I am happy to give an honest, accurate and balanced reference, but that form does not allow me to do it. Would I confirm as true something that the employee is lying or being misleading about? No absolutely not. I would say something along the lines of "I have some additional or different perspectives and recollections of these events"

Answer 6

Get legal advice

There have been successful cases brought over misleading references. This has gone both ways, an employee suing over a misleadingly bad reference or a future employer suing over a misleadingly good reference.

Answer 7

Since it sounds like you're willing to provide a reference, but not answer the employer's questions, I'd propose something in line with that:

Tell them you're unable to go into too much detail about past employees (or that you're unable to provide answers to about some of those questions) as a matter of policy, and instead give them a standard reference letter where you talk about their strengths and such.

It's possible that this would raise more concerns than simply saying you can't provide a reference at all as a matter of policy. This depends on how in-depth the questionnaire is, and whether there's something that isn't necessarily too concerning, but still is something a past employer may not be comfortable sharing.

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Another option is to just ignore their questionnaire entirely and send them a standard reference letter. And if they come back and ask you to complete the questionnaire, simply politely refer back to your reference letter to find all necessary details. This certainly isn't the most agreeable response, but while it's possible that they'd view that as you not wanting to be honest in the questionnaire, one might also expect such a response from someone who's a bit "stuck up" and just doesn't have the patience to jump through other people's hoops. I would guess that it's not super common to ask references to fill in questionnaires, in which case this response would be somewhat less suspicious. That may reflect somewhat poorly on you, rather than reflecting poorly on the employee. You can decide if that's a desirable outcome.

Of course it may somewhat reflect on them in that they chose you as a reference, but this is less so if you were their manager in their recent employment, as that's a fairly standard reference to provide.

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You probably shouldn't agree to be a reference if you're unwilling to answer "yes" to "would you hire them again" (whether that's honest or not).

They probably shouldn't ask you to be a reference if you fired them for poor performance. But it's also possible that taking that risk is their best option (not that this is your problem).

Answer 8

When hiring someone yourself, you'll find yourself very grateful to trustworthy references and so when acting as a reference yourself, you are indirectly returning the favour. So "don't lie" is absolutely necessary.

However, it is bad form to speak ill of previous employees even if they didn't do a good job. In a professional ending of someone's employment, no matter who initiated it, there's no hard feelings from either party and thereby also a silent agreement that the previous employee will not speak bad of the company and vice versa.

Keep in mind that everything you say as a reference will reflect back to the company, if you still work there. So starting to bad-mouth previous employers might look worse for your company than for the person getting bad-mouthed.

I recall this happening once when I snooped around for references beyond what the candidate had given me. One company where they had worked at was completely unprofessional, bad-mouthing the candidate and with no concrete arguments at that. To the point where I had to completely discard that reference and even sympathized with the candidate quitting their job there.

Still you can hint of things without bad-mouthing the candidate. Suppose they were really bad at showing up punctually at work in the morning and the interviewer asks you as a reference if the candidate was punctual. Then you can always choose to say "I can't comment on that" or "we have a policy not to disclose that outside the origanization" etc - you don't have to give an answer.

Now if you did answer most other questions, the interviewer will find themselves with a mysterious blank spot, which is a warning sign. Then they can get back to the candidate and ask the question to them directly. How they chose to reply is then up to themselves. But then you as a reference haven't thrown them directly under the bus.

In particular, you should not discuss health issues, family status or other private information you might have. That would be both unethical and possibly also have legal consequences (GDPR and all that).

Answer 9

In my final year studying engineering in the '80s, we did employment law and industrial relations in final year as most engineers tend to move into management in their 30s. On the question of writing references for ex-employees who have been moved on, our lecturer advised no overt negative evaluations lest an employee come to read the reference and take issue with it. Rather, he suggested we use a sort of phrasing in our references that would allow personnel managers to decode the limitations - professional or character-wise - of the employee.

Personally, I would refine this a bit more as lawyers have long since referred to such phrasing in assorted employment law cases. How I would do it would be to explicitly indicate the strong (or at least adequate) parts of the ex-employee's capabilities while omitting any evaluation of weaker aspects of their work-performance.

So the performance evaluation part of the reference (for say a software developer) might run a bit like:

" . . . After initial training, Mr/Ms X's performance was generally satisfactory during his/her period in our employment, particularly in conceptualizing models for software systems and in system documentation."

This much description of X's performance is - generally though not entirely - true. But of course hiring managers would be able to infer that other vital qualities of a good developer like good coding skills and habits, testing ability, adherence to organization software conventions, team-mate support, communication skill, etc are left uncommented on . . .