Disciplinaries and Dismissals Advice for Employers

Your dedicated WorkNest team will utilise their Employment Law expertise and in-depth understanding of your business to help you to craft any correspondence you might need throughout the disciplinary process. We’ll ensure that meeting invites contain all the necessary information, help you to construct carefully-worded outcome letters explaining how you have arrived at your decision and why this warrants a particular course of action, and everything in between.

Yes. If you’re not confident tackling the situation alone, we can provide on-site HR Consultancy support with disciplinary investigations, hearings and appeals. We can conduct the meetings for you or, if you prefer, attend them with you to offer professional, experienced support. We can also provide similar assistance with employee grievances.

Through myWorkNest, you can access a full case history, including attendance notes and correspondence with your adviser. Not only will this help you to demonstrate that you followed a fair procedure, but you can also refer back to written advice and call recordings at a later date should you encounter a similar scenario or need to demonstrate compliance.

Some providers’ self-insurance models can result in overly restrictive advice. At WorkNest, our Legal Expenses Insurance is independent, and our advice is genuinely commercial; we will help you to achieve your preferred outcome whilst being mindful of potential legal risks. Dismissing an employee during their probationary period, for example, is fairly low-risk, and provided this wouldn’t constitute automatically unfair dismissal, we won’t prevent you from making these basic employment decisions.

Formal disciplinary action is any sanction that follows a formal disciplinary meeting. It could be a first written warning, a final written warning or dismissal. A sanction should only be issued following a formal disciplinary process, which will usually involve an investigation, an invite to a meeting, the meeting itself, then a letter confirming the outcome.

Yes. Employees resigning during the disciplinary process is a fairly common tactic adopted by someone facing serious allegations. Resignation is a unilateral act, and employers cannot choose to accept or reject the resignation. If someone resigns with immediate effect, their employment ends straightaway. If they resign with notice, then it may be that you can conclude the disciplinary process before the notice period ends.

Generally speaking, it is investigation, meeting, outcome, appeal. How long each step takes, and the exact process involved, will often depend on the seriousness or complexity of the allegations.

A companion in a disciplinary hearing can take notes and can make representations on behalf of the employee. Beyond that, their role is pretty limited. What they cannot do is answer any questions posed directly to the employee.

A union representative or a work colleague. Employees are not permitted to take friends or family members into a disciplinary hearing unless they are also colleagues and/or union representatives.

Yes, provided that the letter inviting the employee to the disciplinary hearing makes it clear that is one possible outcome.