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I think DH may lose his job. Employment tribunal help needed

3 replies

notasausage · 19/03/2013 14:39

Reporting from Legal issues as I didn't get much response.

He has been working for a year with a relatively small company undergoing rapid growth. He has lots of relevant skills but the core skill for which he was employed he had only very limited experience and on employment made it clear that he would require training. This was promised but has not been forthcoming. No concerns regarding his development were raised by the company at 6 month review although DH commented on lack of training. At 8 months they started to put pressure on him to improve core skill but still no training materialised. Now a year in and they have started formal competency review proceedings and a little training has started. Unfortunately during practice DH destroyed a piece of equipment having been left to his own devices after some familiarisation training. He is worried that they will use this to say he is not capable.

So.....what evidence/proof would he need for unfair dismissal on the basis that they have not provided adequate training and do they need to pay him his contracted notice period if they sack him for failing to develop this key skill? Does anyone have experience of employment tribunals?

He has been employed since before April last year as I know the criteria changed for unfair dismissal then.

Thanks

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flowery · 19/03/2013 16:05

What makes him think they are going to dismiss him? When did this incident with the equipment happen? If he thinks they might say it's gross misconduct (ie enough to dismiss him straight off without him being on a disciplinary warning already), they should have told him that's a possibility and invited him to a hearing.

Evidence for unfair dismissal would be usually about the process used not being fair and reasonable, but also might be about the decision to dismiss not being a reasonable one.

A fair and reasonable process to dismiss for performance would involve a series of disciplinary hearings, stepping up the warning levels, with time to improve and appropriate support being given in between.

Has he had any formal hearings with disciplinary warnings being given yet?

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notasausage · 20/03/2013 20:27

He has had one hearing under their competency procedure which was only implemented in January and his hearing was at the end of beginning of march. Following this latest incident which happened about a week after the first hearing, he has been invited to a final hearing on Friday - about 2 weeks since the first hearing with only 2x 10 minute training sessions offered. As he suspected they say that the incident demonstrates that he is not capable of achieving the skill level required. They seem to be following a standard procedure with the hearings but the lack of training on their part makes it seem unreasonable that they are even at the hearing stage.

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notasausage · 20/03/2013 20:28

Beginning of march

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