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promotion. The employee’s probation period for the promotion was extended after concerns were raised with the amount of time he was spending working in the field. It was then discovered that the employee had been working remotely from Egypt, where his family lived, without being on approved annual leave. Data from the laptop suggested this had been going on for several weeks, but the employee claimed this was inaccurate. Additionally, around the same time, the business changed their company car policy and required employees to purchase their own car to replace their company lease car. It was found that the employee hadn’t done so and was given two weeks to rectify it. The employer was ready to suspend the employee for failing to achieve this, but when they went to do so, the employee informed them he’d secured a vehicle. Instead, he was issued a letter warning him of disciplinary consequences if he didn’t spend four days a week working in the field. A few months later, when reviewing the employee’s expenses, the employer found they were far lower than the rest of the team, when they were expected to be much higher. The employer approached the employee suggesting that the expenses showed he’d only travelled a handful of times in the previous three months. The employee was summarily dismissed for gross misconduct for “stealing money from the company” and “illegitimately taking a salary”. Following this, the employer was advised they should have followed a correct process to dismiss.
The employee appealed the decision. At the appeal, the decision was overturned due to the company’s failure to follow the correct process. He was, however, suspended while it was investigated further. Following the investigation, in which the employee agreed he’d been working in Egypt and provided explanations, he was dismissed for a second time. The employee raised a claim for unfair dismissal. Although the Tribunal found there were “reasonable grounds” to support the employer’s belief that the employee was guilty of the alleged misconduct, they found
investigating manager was only looking for evidence to support the allegations rather than carrying out a fair investigation process. The Tribunal awarded £61,419.
Dan Carder
Human Resources Content Consultant, Peninsula
the dismissal was unfair. This was largely due to the failings in the disciplinary process, i.e. summarily dismissing without an investigation or disciplinary. However, the Tribunal noted that the employer knew the first dismissal would be likely to be found unfair, and then set out to orchestrate a process to make it seem otherwise but achieve the same result. The second dismissing manager had only been with the business for a few weeks, and the Tribunal felt they would feel obliged to uphold the original decision. The Tribunal also pointed out that the
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