Disciplinary for slamming a door?

[RonaldMcDonald]

Hi

I have been asked to help a young member of staff with a disciplinary meeting.
She is terrified by the process and isn't a member of a union.

She has reportedly slammed a door and an investigation has been carried out with other staff members but not herself and as a result they have called her to a disciplinary meeting.

In the notes presented to her, her boss alludes to problems that she had 10 mths ago that were never formally dealt with ie no warnings etc were given or performance management implemented. He seems to be rolling issues that they had addressed and moved forward from last year into this situation.
He has said that this has put them right back to the beginning of the problems 10 mths ago and that he now cannot trust her to behave 'appropriately'

I was wondering if that is fair and okay for him to do so.
It feels as though these issues are now being taken as an agreed problem that she has failed to address when actually nothing was put in place other than an exploration of each other's pov.

She has been working there for 20 mths and her boss is ex military and has had issues with her 'insubordination'.
She is shy and logical and does not always jump quickly enough when barked at. She can come across as sullen at times and she certainly rubs him up the wrong way. She is a good worker and a v young woman.

Any advice would be very gratefully received

They can only deal with the issues and evidence presented to the displinary panel so unless they provide full issues of what happened 10 months ago I don't believe it can be included.

Was the door slammed in anger or just shut too hard or let to swing shut. What happened before the slamming of the door is key.

She was asked to fetch something for someone

She was deep in her work and said, 'yeah, I'll get it in a minute'
She was told, 'no, get it now'
She stropped out of the room and slammed the door

Person who asked her to get the thing is much older and usually histrionic
She then told all and sundry about what had happened and how it had flustered her
When they were asked to discuss it together the older woman wanted the younger to accept her version of events without question or exception
She did not and was upset it was being discussed with everyone and that no one had asked her side of the story

Investigation was carried out, still without asking her side of the story
Disciplinary called

Nothing of fact regarding what happened 10mths ago has been included
Just 'we are right back to square one' type commentary and 'can't trust you' type comments from her manager.
Manager and a HR rep will run the meeting

From your second post, it sounds as if the disciplinary has been called because of a perceived inappropriate display of temper in the workplace.

If it is conducted well, the disciplinary procedure will give her the opportunity she wants to present her side of the case.

Previous issues may or may not be relevant (they might be included if they tend to show a pattern of behaviour).

In presenting her case, it will be vital that she does not show temper, or indeed become emotional at all. She ought to be allowed to take a supporter (as she is not a union member, the obvious choice of union rep is not available, but does she have a trusted colleague?)

She needs to be as factual and neutral as possible. And include information on whose job it actually is to fetch the item. Saying 'it's not my job' might be accurate, but looks unco-operative, especially if this is an unspecified point which generally works smoothly on goodwill/team spirit. Better to stress what she was in the middle of, why it was more important than the other task, and what she said about how long it would take before she could break off.

Sounds awful. I know someone who had a complaint put in their personnel notes about eating toast at work in their non-paid hours. They moved to another location and their new managers took one look at the notes, said it was ridiculous, and tore it up.

Thanks for your replies

I have been asked to attend the meeting with her but can't truly understand how she can prepare for the meeting if she doesn't know what the specific issues are that he is alluding to 10 mths ago.
They are not detailed in the letter or anywhere else for that matter - it is hard to see if they form the basis of anything as they aren't detailed?!
They had teething problems, as a team, in the beginning but in the person's opinion that is all they were.

If there was no disciplinary then, how can it be added together now to form the basis of a disciplinary months and months later?

This might help.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/problems-at-work/disciplinary-meetings/disciplinary-meetings-where-to-start/

Most job descriptions will have a bit at the bottom saying any other tasks required by line manager. There is a bit difference between a stroppy yeah I will get it in a minutes and saying I will do it as soon as I have finished this task.

I think that whether it's legitimate to display frustration might also be related to issues of
a) general job description of the worker
b) the job descriptions of others
c) job grades and hierarchies
c) issues of possible ageism
d) workloads and deadlines

For example you might, despite your age, have a relatively responsible job where you had to work to tight deadlines. And/or a high degree of accuracy was expected so interruptions would be counterproductive

However, others in the office, because you were young and female might alsosee you as someone who should also be asked to do a variety of additional low-grade tasks and were therefore seen as 'the girl', 'the junior' etc.

Inevitably it would cause stress when asked to break off from an important task, to do an unimportant task. If you say yes, it's possible that you'll make a mistake on the important task, or have to stay late to complete it. If you say no, you'll do it later - a colleague or line manager may decide to perceive this as unhelpful.

Perhaps what is useful is greater clarity about roles and duties. Is this something which is being given by the person in charge. If not, how can the situation be improved.

That's one way to play it. (Without knowing anything about what actually went on.)

The request was described as a 'favour'

Except that the favour couldn't be completed in a minute as requested and certainly couldn't be refused.

The person who requested it isn't her lm or boss.

She shouldn't have slammed the door but it feels as though they are adding lots of bits together to form the basis of a disciplinary
They are adding lots of other people's opinion without taking their notes

Don't know what to say to her for the best

Have they specified a clear reason for the disciplinary meeting?
Does your colleague have all relevant paperwork from them to support this?
Has she ever been spoken to previously about anything by her manager or by HR and has this been documented and she received a copy of minutes of this?
Does she also have copies of the statements from the people who have supposedly given them and is HR able to support these comments in any way?

Are you a union member who could ask the questions for her?
Also, where I worked previously you were able to sign up and join the union even in the day of a hearing and they would still support you
Also, you need to arrange time, say an hour prior to the disciplinary, to sit down quietly with her and go through her paperwork
Make any notes you feel relevant along with any questions/queries about the process being followed
Has she been given a copy of the company disciplinary policy?

If she's been there less than two years they could easily just dismiss her anyway, so I don't think there's much value in trying to pick holes in how justified a disciplinary hearing is or isn't tbh. They don't need to bother with one at all if they don't want to.

She can't address concerns at a hearing which haven't been outlined to her clearly, and best practice would be that concerns which are going to form part of a disciplinary procedure are dealt with promptly rather than months down the line.

Having said that, it is fine to take someone general record into account when deciding on the level of warning for a certain offence. For example, if two people had committed the same offence, one had previously been exemplary and had no formal or informal concerns ever raised, and the other one had had similar concerns raised informally several times but just never quite made it to a formal scenario, they might end up with differing levels of warning for similar offences.

From a law firm's website.

Is the dismissal discriminatory?

Dismissals which take place for a discriminatory reason will be actionable irrespective of length of service. Therefore, although the employee may not be able to claim unfair dismissal if they have less than the qualifying service, they could claim that their dismissal was discriminatory. Compensation for a discriminatory dismissal is calculated in a similar way to an unfair dismissal claim in terms of compensation for loss of earnings, but there is no cap on compensation in discrimination cases as there is in ordinary unfair dismissal, and an injury to feelings award is also payable where a finding of discrimination is made.

In light of this, when considering dismissal, employers should consider the reason for dismissal and whether it is linked in any way to a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Okay sorry I'm a little confused

She wanted to ask for clarity around why they are deciding to have a disciplinary at this time
She also wanted to read what they think she has done in the past to warrant this.

If she has no rights to this really then there is no point in her asking is there?
Will that simply upset them more?
Also if they can just dismiss her without a meeting it seems a little fake to imaging that they are going to take on board anything she has got to say

Her manager is starting and hearing the process with HR alongside.

I thought she had better protections or rights
Thanks for all your help

As other have said, with 20 months service she has no employment rights. It sounds like her boss thinks she has a bad attitude and is taking steps to dismiss her before she passes the 2 year mark.

I suggest you go along as moral support, and just double check at the start that she understands the process etc - maybe suggesting a break if she gets upset, that sort of thing. you're not her lawyer - you shouldn't be answering questions, objecting to paperwork or telling her what to ask.

Sounds dodgy to me, I've had to implement disciplinary procedures in previous jobs.

If they had issues with performance 10 months ago they should have been dealt with 10 months ago. They can't just wait for her to screw up and add everything together to discipline her now.

That's why there is usually different disciplinary stages, verbal/written...

If whilst she was on say a verbal warning something happened then it could go to a 1st written warning and so on up to dismissal.

But by the sounds of it they've let her screw up and instead of dealing with each individual issue separately they are doing it all together. Which isn't right as she hasn't had the opportunity to rectify/train/change behaviour.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Thanks

As I've said she's just a young woman and this is her first job
She hasn't had an easy time and at times, I'm sure, hasn't made things easy on herself
She's youngest in the office by 20+ yrs and I think that that has a bearing upon the situation as do other members of staff

I'm not trying to be her lawyer but I've been asked to accompany her and give her a hand and I wanted to know the right way to go about things.
I didn't realise that she had so few rights in this situation.

I thought that in work you dealt with situations as they occurred.
I thought that there was almost a type of statute of limitations on occurrences
I didn't think that you waited to add them together to get enough to make a reasonable case at a disciplinary hearing. Something about that seems unfair

There again I didn't know that it wasn't necessary to have a disciplinary at all!!
Sorry for not knowing the rules

Normally too an employee would have a probationary period, and regular appraisals - of which there should be a written record.

This should be used to indicate that somebody's work was satisfactory. Or if there were were earlier problem, how they had been addressed and resolved.

There should also be a written contract of employment - and this will often give details of the company's disciplinary procedure. Is this procedure being followed?

www.unison.org.uk/get-help/issues-at-work/discipline/overview/
could be useful.

Also www.acas.org.uk/contact

"I didn't think that you waited to add them together to get enough to make a reasonable case at a disciplinary hearing. Something about that seems unfair"

As a general thing (not commenting on this situation specifically) it's fine to discipline for a pattern of behaviour even if each individual instance is not in itself worthy of a disciplinary warning. You'd expect reasonable attempts to be made to bring the concerns to the attention of the individual and for them to have the opportunity to improve though.

But anyway, as has been said, that's all pretty irrelevant this early in employment.

Ronald, you are right that those things are good practice, but that's unfortunately not necessary in these circumstances.

No need to apologise for not knowing the rules - that's what MN is brilliant for!

As an update
They sacked her about 30 mins ago. I was shocked even though you had all been very helpful and laid out the problems here.
Thanks for all your help, it has certainly been eye opening

The letter inviting her to the meeting had said she could receive a warning.
Gosh, sacked

She was so so upset

Shocking indeed.

I am surprised that there has been HR involvement as it does not sound from what you have written that a fair process has been followed at all.

How does your colleague feel about appealing the decision?