Practical guidance on handling appeals against disciplinary decisions, including the Acas code of practice; the right to be accompanied; the appeal hearing; and re-instating the employee.
Practical guidance on the situation where an employee goes off sick during a disciplinary process, including medical evidence; and postponement of the disciplinary meeting.
Practical guidance on handling gross misconduct dismissals, including which offences amount to gross misconduct; suspension during investigation; criminal proceedings; and the disciplinary meeting.
In Airbus UK Ltd v Webb [2008] IRLR 309, the Court of Appeal held that Diosynth Ltd v Thomson did not establish a rule of law that spent warnings must be ignored for all purposes. On the facts, where a spent warning was not part of the reason for the dismissal, but the basis for the employer's refusal to exercise leniency in respect of later gross misconduct, neither Diosynth nor the wording of s.98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 rendered the dismissal necessarily unfair.
In Davies v Farnborough College of Technology [2008] IRLR 14, the EAT held that a dismissal that involved a breach of step two of the statutory dismissal and disciplinary procedure was automatically unfair, even though a full and proper appeal had been heard. The tribunal was wrong to find that the appeal "cured" the defect in the original hearing. However, it was clear that a dismissal would have occurred even if the procedure had been properly followed, so the compensatory award was set at zero.
Practical guidance on taking disciplinary action against an employee during pregnancy or maternity leave, including avoiding discrimination; and dismissing an employee on maternity leave.