Dismissal Procedure Pitfall

Even if you believe that you have a fair reason for dismissal, it could be considered unfair by the Employment Tribunal if the procedure used to carry out the dismissal is incorrect.

For example, in the case of Charalambous v National Bank of Greece, an employee was dismissed after copying parties from outside the organisation into a private email containing sensitive data. The Employee Handbook required that the County Manager made all final decisions on dismissals, and so notes from the disciplinary hearings were passed on to them. They decided that the employee would be summarily dismissed. However, the County Manager also carried out the investigation when the matter was first raised.

The Acas code of practice states that, where possible, the person who makes the final decision on dismissal should not be involved in the investigation stage of the disciplinary procedure. However, in this specific case, the Employer was successful at the tribunal- as the employee was given an appeal meeting that was held by another manager and corrected this procedural error. This highlights the importance of fair appeal hearings, as the appeal process could allow you to correct small mistakes made in the disciplinary procedure.

It is vital that you follow both the Acas code of practice related to dismissal, and the procedure within your Employee Handbook, to avoid cases of unfair dismissal. This will include having a different person hold the investigation and disciplinary hearing and also allowing the employees the right of appeal. In this specific case, even though the employer initially made a procedural error, it was following the correct disciplinary procedure regarding appeals that led to them being successful at the Employment Tribunal.