Employee Disciplinary

With employee disciplinary issues, this is a very common concern. It could be that you’ve let performance or attendance issues drag on for longer than they should have done and have then had a moment where you’ve lost your patience and said something that you now think you probably shouldn’t have said.

Another common concern regarding employee disciplinary issues is that a warning has been issued that you now want to rely on, but you’ve realised that you didn’t follow the correct process with the initial warning.

Whilst we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, we can certainly help you to come up with a plan to move the employee disciplinary issue forward. All we ask is that you are completely honest with us. We’ll offer no judgement as to what has happened to date and just focus on giving you guidance and support so that you can be confident that the next actions you take will follow the correct employee disciplinary procedure.

Ultimately, the employee disciplinary procedure can result in dismissal. If you haven’t followed the correct process, then that dismissal can be deemed to be legally unfair and you’ll find yourself in an Employment Tribunal needing to defend your actions. This is distracting and expensive – especially if you lose the case!

By getting help from Lighter HR, we’ll work with you to ensure that the employee disciplinary procedure that you follow is fair and legally sound.

This helps you in two ways:

^. Firstly, if the employee feels that they have been treated fairly, they are significantly less likely to bring a claim even if they don’t like the outcome;
^. Secondly, by following a legally sound process, you are best placed to argue your case in an Employment Tribunal.

It’s also worth remembering that, if you fail to follow correct legal / ACAS employee disciplinary procedure then if you do lose an Employment Tribunal you could be required to pay an additional 25% to the employee on top of any award they are granted.

We’re not trying to scare you, that’s not our approach, but we do think getting our help with employee disciplinary issues is a commercially good idea.

The first thing we’ll do is get a full understanding from you of the employee disciplinary issue that you’re dealing with. We’ll need a detailed history and this is where you need to tell us EVERYTHING! We won’t judge, although we will be honest with you, and we may have to tell you things that you don’t really want to hear. We think it’s better that you hear it from us early on the process than from an employment tribunal judge when it’s all gone wrong.

Once we understand the employee disciplinary issue that you’re looking to deal with, we’ll let you know the options. We’ll tell you the different approaches that you can take and the risks associated with each of them and together, we’ll come up with a plan.

From there, we can support from afar by prepping you for meetings, providing you with documentation and be ready to answer any questions that come up. Alternatively, we can be in the room or on the calls with you and the employee, doing most of the talking on your behalf and take a more central role in the process.

We do need to be clear that the decisions are always yours as you are the employer.

There’s no hiding from the fact that you will need to be involved in dealing with an employee disciplinary. You’re the employer (or the employer’s representative) and you’re likely to be much closer to the facts that we can be.

However, we can definitely do the majority of the work on your behalf. We can undertake investigations, we can write outcome letters (the accuracy and detail of which is vitally important just in case you find yourself defending an Employment Tribunal claim) and we can chair meetings.

No-one, no matter what they may tell you, can completely remove the risk of an employee raising an employment tribunal claim.

When it comes to dealing with employee disciplinary issues there are definitely some steps that we’ll take with you that will help to manage the risk.

Firstly, we’ll make sure that the employee disciplinary procedure is the right thing to do. Sometimes you can want to quickly move to action but, if an employee hasn’t had feedback before now and the first time they hear that you’ve got issues with their performance is when you invite them to an employee disciplinary hearing, it’s unlikely to end well!

Secondly, we’ll make sure that we get all of the facts. We’ll make sure that the correct investigations are undertaken where necessary and that the individual is provided with all of the information that they need in order to be able to fully defend themselves. If an individual feels they are treated fairly and given an ability to present their version of events, they are less likely to take action even when they don’t like the outcome.

Critically, we can manage the risk of you incurring higher-than-necessary awards and paying the additional 25% at tribunal for failing to follow the appropriate process.

Since the abolition of tribunal fees in 2017, employees have had easier access to tribunal claims. In the period April to June 2018 there was a 165% increase in claims when compared to the same period in 2017. There was a further 26% increase in claims during 2019. This means it’s more important than ever to seek professional advice and support.