Who can issue final written warning?

[cornnotonacob]

Namechanged just in case. My dbro has been issued a final written warning - way too harsh but he's not willing to appeal, however, it was issued by a manager on the same level as him. Is this allowed? It's a big retail organisation - over 400 stores nationwide so not like they're short of people to do it. He's willing to appeal on a procedural error. Thank you!

Depends what the company policy is. I work in HR in retail and this would be acceptable as long they had been appropriately trained and were able to make an impartial decision e.g didn't witness the misconduct for example

It is written in the company policy that it's allowed if appropriately trained (not sure if he actually is) but didn't know if this was actually legal. Dbro is even more annoyed as the guy who did it is an underperforming manager! Guess he needs to somehow find out if the guy has actually been trained!!!

From the point of view of a tribunal a dismissal is automatically unfair if a company doesn't follow its own policy however that doesn't mean that it would always find in that persons favour. If the warning was issued outside of the procedure but the process followed was fair and had no impact on the investigation/decision then any appeal would not be upheld. I guess the easier way to put it is - if the warning had been issued by a more senior manager would there be any grounds for appeal? If not then there is little chance of it being over turned in this case. Hope that helps

It does - thank you. I'm going to encourage him to appeal the actual warning - it was way too harsh!!!!

If it’s within their policy that’s fine, and he’s better appealing on the harshness being unreasonable. But it is a bit odd, and unusual. Why wasn’t the process conducted by his own manager?