Advice needed on impending disciplinary situation

[mumtoh]

Advice needed please (long, sorry)! Basically my OH manages a team of people, they mostly work autonomously away from the office and come in regularly for team meetings etc. He has had an issue with one of his staff members who has rubbed up a lot of people in the company the wrong way, to the extent that last year he was in the position of potentially investigating her behaviour with a view to beginning a disciplinary process due to the high number of complaints and problems it was causing in the team. However, she broke down when my OH began to talk to her about the problems with her performance. It ended up that she was signed off work with depression for months, and when she returned earlier this year problems again raised their head with the way she relates to other people, and more complaints came in. My OH was asked by his manager to talk to her about these recent issues, with a person there as note taker. He arranged to do this, the meeting happened with a note-taker but then after the meeting he had to call her in to the office to tell her she needed to go home until she had been ?ok?d? by her doctor to return to work (he hadn?t made this clear in the meeting). They then had a conversation for about 20 minutes, with no-one else present. She has complained about what he said during this second conversation and the upshot is he has been called to a disciplinary meeting (notified to him at 5.00 tonight) with his boss on Fri to answer various allegations, ie why he hadn?t got a note taker for the second ?meeting?, using apparently inappropriate language (she said he called her unfit) and talking about topics outside of the scope of the meeting. On reflection, he says that she could have taken some of what he said the wrong way, but that he meant to cheer her up by talking to her in a ?jokey? way. He is scheduled to be meeting this staff member tomorrow to discuss the concerns about her performance from last year, but obviously feels uncomfortable about this due to the impending disciplinary. I feel he should talk to HR tomorrow asap to outline the fact that the meeting with the staff member tomorrow is not appropriate due to the fact he has to face a disciplinary procedure on Friday about his last conversation with her. What does anyone else think? Any HR experts on here that can give their view??

Disciplinary procedures are a minefield and often those who make claims are more successful when arguing that procedure was not followed correctly than actual facts of the case.

Not sure how large a company your DH works for or what his qualifications/experience is, however it sounds as if he was maybe not best prepared to undertake the disciplinary procedure.

I agree he needs to talk with HR tomorrow, he needs to explain what he did and why, but more importantly he needs (if relevant) to explain how he was not trained to handle this difficult situation.

I handle HR for my SME and prepare fully for each of my staff meetings, I also have a contract with a legal support company to talk through each move that I make.

Unfortunately these days you can just use common sense and fairness when dealing with HR issues.

I hope your DH gets the support he needs from HR

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I said that to him too, it doesn't sound like he was properly trained to deal with this kind of issue (he is fairly new to staff management). His meeting tomorrow is with this staff member - his own disciplinary is on Friday. I think he shouldn't have to do the meeting with his staff member tomorrow given the fact he has his own disciplinary meeting on Friday where he has to defend himself about what happened when he last spoke to this person. Is that fair on him, to have to meet with her tomorrow?