If there comes a time were you believe you may need to sack an employee for whatever reason, then there are a number of points you need to consider, even if you only have one employee:  

Firstly, it is important to remember that you need to ensure that your employees are aware of what you consider to be misconduct or unreasonable behaviour.  Without these guidelines how will your employee know what you expect of them? So you should draw up a set of rules which indicate clearly what you and your company believe to be unreasonable behaviour.  You must also be clear as to the consequences if the rules are broken. 

There are two types of misconduct which you need to consider, and they will directly affect the way in which you decide to disciple your employee.  The first is general misconduct and the second is gross misconduct. The first you would consider to be a misdemeanor, and the second a serious offence; as a consequence you would react differently in each case.

General Misconduct
These types of offences are minor or one off offences and would not result in something serious happening to your business as a consequence of the employee's actions.  They may include:

• Being late for work 
• Using the telephone for personal calls
• Using a company vehicle for unauthorised personal use
• under performance

Gross Misconduct
Serious misconduct goes under this category.  Here you would treat the offence very seriously.  Often this type of misconduct may be due to an employee continuing to offend i.e. 

• continuously late
• using the phone for personal use after repeated warning not to
• Repeated unauthorised use of a company vehicle despite warning not to
• repeated under performance despise measures taken to alleviate the situation 

If an employee continually repeats an offence then it graduates more towards gross misconduct.