Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today, in the Lefebvre HR and Employment Law podcast, we're discussing the judgment in the case of alarm and financial conduct authority, in which the Employment Appeal Tribunal was asked to consider whether a failure to release transcripts of a colleague's investigation interviews and the employer's use of a pre-prepared script at the disciplinary hearing had rendered a misconduct dismissal procedurally unfair. In this case, A worked for a regulatory body until his dismissal for misconduct. A had befriended a female colleague, S, and had given her several gifts and they exchanged lots of emails. However, after a disagreement between them in the staff canteen, S accused A of stalking her. S later received an extremely hostile email, anonymously, which she raised with HR believing A to be the author. The manager investigating the grievance did not uphold the stalking allegation but did find that the hostile anonymous email S had received had likely been sent by A, and that this could amount to harassment under the employer's policies. On receipt of the investigation report, A emailed both his and S's managers referencing the outcome of his own complaint against S, and attaching a copy of one of the recommendations from that report. The employer triggered a disciplinary process against A for harassment, in relation to the anonymous email, and breach of confidentiality in relation to the second email he had sent. Both allegations were upheld and A was dismissed for misconduct. After his internal appeal failed, A brought various employment claims, all of which the Employment Tribunal dismissed. He appealed, arguing that the Tribunal had erred when it failed to find that his dismissal was unfair because: 1) during the disciplinary process, he had not been provided with transcripts of S's investigation interviews; 2) his dismissal was prejudged because the dismissing officer had followed a script pre-prepared by HR during the disciplinary hearing; and 3) the employee's forensic search of his work computer breached his human rights. The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal and held that the tribunal had not made an error. It held that although S's original stalking complaint had been far-ranging, the disciplinary process only related to the two emails, so the failure to share S's interview transcripts with A did not prevent him from defending himself. That the pre-prepared script followed at the disciplinary hearing did not show that the dismissal was prejudged. Instead, it sought his responses to questions relating to the misconduct allegations. Further, the tribunal had been entitled to rely on the dismissing officer's evidence that the decision to dismiss was his alone and that he had taken the representations A made into account when reaching it, and that the search of his computer could not taint the fairness of his dismissal because the employer had not relied on the findings generated by the search in support of either the disciplinary charges or the dismissal. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.