Employers have to go through various complicated procedures before they can dismiss you unless your behaviour is so terrible that they can justify your immediate dismissal without notice. Such behaviour is often called "gross misconduct" However, even in those cases, most employers choose to go through the procedures to be on the safe side.
Broadly speaking, the procedures are as follows...
- You should be notified that there is a problem or an allegation.
- The company investigates it.
- There should be a hearing inside the company which you can attend, together with a witness, ie: a colleague or trade union representative, to answer the allegations and give your side of the story.
- If the complaint is upheld, the company should give a verbal or a written warning and this should go on your file. If it was more serious, but not quite gross misconduct, they could dismiss you with notice.
- If there are other problems you should receive a further written warning or perhaps a final written warning, but before these are given you should still have an investigation phase and a disciplinary hearing so you can give your version of events.
- If there are more problems then the next stage would be dismissal but only after investigation and disciplinary hearings.
- Also, for all of the above stages, including the dismissal stage, the company should have an appeals procedure. This means that after the decision is made you can appeal to a higher level of management and ask them to reconsider.
- We will be glad to help you through these disciplinary stages. Once your employer starts official disciplinary procedures it usually means that you are about to be dismissed. The company may deal with trivial cases more informally and start formal disciplinary procedures when they have already decided to dismiss you.
- It is vital that you should take notes during these disciplinary stages because the more information you have the more we are able to damage your employer's case and point out procedural errors.
Always call us or email us first and we'll help you decide what to do.
