Yes, you can fire someone over teams but...
Check everything with your HR person and make sure HR and management *in whatever location this guy works at* know about it!
In particular - they might have concerns about:
1) If you send this guy a teams invite and he just takes the meeting at his desk in an open office then you've got privacy issues, (possible) issues with his reaction to being fired- they may want a meeting room booked for this if he's not working from home.
2) They will maybe want to notify building security at that other office location, coordinate with IT too so that his entry pass, email account and login etc.. all disconnect/become invalid right after the meeting. It is potentially an issue if he's going to be using his work laptop for this meeting - what does he have access too via his login - production systems? IP? etc.
Ideally, you want a meeting room booked, a local HR person present in the meeting and either his laptop taken off him as soon as the meeting is over or better yet just have the HR person set up the teams call with yourself and get him to come to a meeting room without his laptop etc.
Broadly you're fine here if it's < 2 years, especially if performance related. Definitely a good idea to not mention anything disability related if that's never been brought up and is just a personal hypothesis - if that is in fact the case then it creates a big potential liability for the company.
Just some minor criticism though - even if the company doesn't have a formal PIP process it's still your team and you can still choose to work with a HR rep and implement something along those lines (and indeed push for the company to broadly adopt such a thing).
In particular - did this guy pass his 6 month (or whatever time period) "probation" - if so why? If he's still in his probation period then perhaps this isn't appropriate unless he's really bad and you should instead look at something like extending the probation by 3 or 6 months and giving him objective points to improve upon + a team leader or more senior team member to mentor and check off on his objectives each week.
If he's passed his probation but is within the 2-year period then what actually happened here - was he OK and then his performance has dropped off? That's where you maybe do want to warn someone and give them 6 months to improve - though if that then leads to him being outside the 2 year period then it seems like something has gone wrong on the management side too here.
Evening. Thanks for the very thorough response.
I will ensure that my equivalent in his office knows it's happening. I will ask that he goes somewhere private, and HR will be in attendance. We will get him disconnected, although he will be asked just to leave his laptop. Shouldn't be a big deal to be honest.
I certainly won't mention my suspicions that he's autistic. I really think it's something that he should have told us though. If no one in his life has picked up on it, I think that's really strange. It's very noticeable in my opinion. Not that it really matters - just complicates the relationship with him.
He did pass his probation. The guy that passed it (equivalent in his office) hadn't had a proper chance to evaluate him, I don't think. That's unfortunate, but these things happen.
His performance hasn't dropped off, but its become more noticeably poor over time. Today, for example, he sent out a quote that hadn't been checked, which is SOP for us, and hadn't sorted out any of the corresponding information as it should have been. It's minor when taken in isolation, but it just makes a more complete picture to me that after 18 months or more, he still hasn't absorbed what some of the guys learn take as the norm in their first few weeks.
Yup, I will be pushing for a proper process. I am as guilty as anyone else, though.
