We wish to make our fulltime employee casual as we have had…

We have informed them that they have not been fufilling there role adequately and we have a list of their failings which we have not shared with them as we would prefer to be nice about it all. Basically we do not think that one person can fufill the role of practice manager adequately. Therefore we are wiping the role and will be sharing the duties between two key front desk operators of equal standing. We believe that the job will be handled better by two people rather than and that accordingly there is no need for a "Practice Manager", as we do not want either of the two front desk operators to pull rank over one another, but for them to work together instead. We have less than 15 employees. We have made the role of Practice Manager redundant and have offered the employee a position in one of the front desk roles, with 30hrs a week instead of 38. The person is pregnant and we were not going to officially make them "casual"at this point as we did not want to have an impact on their ability to recieve materinity leave at a full time rate. We have told them that on their return from maternity leave they will not be offered full time employment as we have had a huge drop in our business's profitability and we will only be employing our staff on a casual basis. To date we employ five dental staff casually. This employee was our only full time employee and we just find it to financially difficult to withstain.

Yes, we are redeploying her as she is not fufilling the duties of her role adequately.

We have made her role of "Practice Manager"non-existant as we do not believe that it can be sucessfully negotiated by one person and that two equal people could divide the duties and carry them out more sucessully.

We are worried that she might go for unfair dismissal even though we are keeping her employed.

We are happy to have her back as a casual after her maternity leave. We cant afford any full time staff however. Legally we can prove through our accountant that the business has gone backwards lately and we need to remain viable for all our staff to remain employed.

We always talked to her when we were dissapointed in her work in the past. We didnt put it in writting. We do have a list of things she did not perform properly. Should be share the list with her so she cant claim unfair dismissal? We did not want to stress her as she is pregnant and we are not being horrible, just trying to find a solution.

Yes it is. There will no longer be a practice manager at the practice. We are only going to have two front desk staff.

Her role/ duties will be divided between the two front desk staff.

Can we highlight that she was unable to carry out the duties of the role and this had made us realise that the role can not be sucessfully fufilled and therefore the role had been made redundant. and two smaller roles have eventuated out of this situation?