disciplinary hearing advice/ thoughts

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my wife has to go to disciplinary hearing tomorrow and work and is in a right old worked up state about it. shes been with the company 4 years, was promoted from her role to lead role and recently a brand new role was created just for her too. so has done very well there.
So anyway about 2 months ago she was given a new ID badge nothing special just her name , photo and company name on it. not something anyone else could make much use of as it has her photo on. usual thing on a lanyard.
however on the back powered by a usb charged small battery it has built in tracker alarm, in case she gets attcked a quick press of the button and it sends out gps. the thing wasnt much good as it needed charging every day ( short battery life ) and she had it charging via usb port in the car.
somehow though when clearing out the car ( rubbish bag for her coffee cups and whatnot when shes on the go as she has to do lot of driving and doesnt get much time to stop for lunch, the id badge ( at best guess) ended up in the rubbish bag and got thrown out. wasnt until friday evening she noticed it missing so thought maybe itw as left in the office. searched office monday morning and no sign so thought she would search again when she got home just in case it was indoors. no luck so reported it first thing tuesday morning.
first she got an earful for leaving it "so long" before reporting it missing ( no one available in office over weekend so effectively one working day though i guess easy to say in hindsight should have reported in monday.
she had a call up to the office thinking they would just give her a verbal telling off but instead told her itw as going to HR department and may be disciplinary action. then about a week later she gets a letter telling her to come to office for a hearing and the letter states "possible consequences arising from this meeting might be that formal disciplinary action up to and including dismissal may be taken against you."

now obviously im biased but surely this doesnt sound like reasonable grounds in any way, shape or form for dismissal? meeting is 10am tomorrow so going to be a long restless night and morning but i think if they did fire her she wouldnt have the fight in her to take them on for unfair dismissal , already shes gotten very down about it and almost resigned herself to being fired and its left a very sour taint in her mouth over the whole matter and she really doesnt want to be there any longer if it goes beyond a verbal warning ( even a written official warning seems unfair to me for this ).
 
Is it not the norm these days a verbal, then a written warning then a final written warning before dismissal.
 
The letter will be a standard HR letter and it will always state that the outcome of the hearing may lead to disciplinary action or dismissal. The thing to remember here is that this is an investigation meeting and that they would be very foolish to deliver any disciplinary outcome without enough time to deliberate as it could be viewed as having a preconceived outcome. The thing that most employees fail on is adhering to procedures - likewise employers. If your wife should have followed a procedure to report the missing badge and she hasn't, then I suspect that is what they will want to investigate. If there is no procedure to follow in the event of a badge going missing, then she can hardly be held accountable. I'm no HR person nor am I an employment lawyer, but I've sat on many of these from a management perspective. Don't stress. Explain facts. Remain calm. Remember that the punishment has to fit the crime, so it's hardly going to result in dismissal for losing a badge and reporting it in one day. Unless her contract says otherwise or a policy/procedure dictates it's gross misconduct. Anyway, it's late and I'm typing on the phone app, so hope that makes sense. Hope it goes well tomorrow and remember that HR is duty bound to have your wife's best interests placed first.
 
Assuming there are no previous infractions on her record, the very worst they can do in this situation is a verbal, or written, warning - certainly not a dismissal just yet.

On the subject of the lanyard, were there any sort of T&Cs given to the colleagues at the time, warning of consequences of loss/damage/etc? You're right, the accidental loss of a lanyard does seem like something very trivial to be considered worthy of a dismissal! Perhaps that sentence "possible consequences arising from this meeting might be that formal disciplinary action up to and including dismissal may be taken against you." is part of a standard letter the company have for all disciplinary hearings, irrespective of the individual case details.

Someone in my old job had a 'formal disciplinary' or something, and was told she could bring an office colleague or union rep in with her if she wanted, that could be worth looking into, ensuring your wife has someone there beside her?
 
At work, we were all given electronic tags to open the doors and work the clocking in machine. We were also all given a form to sign as confirmation that we had received the tags and that we would have to pay £5 for a replacement if lost.

As I didn't think it was fair to force someone to pay for a replacement for something which, due to its use, we had no choice but to take home every day, I crossed out that bit and handed back the form. I haven't managed to lose mine yet - which is most unlike me!


Steve.
 
Four years service, you lose something and then they threaten you with dismissal?
Absolutely disgusting.
Is your wife in a union Dean?
As Chris says, you are allowed to take someone into a meeting with you.
 
You don't make any mention of what your wife does or where (speaking generally: e.g. Working in a finance centre etc) if was the try of badge that can unlock doors like most are these days even if they look simple it could present a security risk, as an example I used to work in a credit card customer service site, where all the account details we held for millions of customers, someone with the right skills could easily have made use of such a badge to access the centre...

Any loss would have to be reported to security as soon as possible we had 24/7 security so that they could deactivate the badge...

As everyone has said it's going to be a standard letter, and no one can advise what will happen
 
no union . and no paperwork other than to say she had recieved one to sign for recipt of it. also having chekd with the supplier of the device as the tracker goes back to them rather than the company if one is lost damaged or stolen they give FREE replacement as its on a monthly ( £10 a month ) service for the tracking
 
MWHCVT said:
You don't make any mention of what your wife does or where (speaking generally: e.g. Working in a finance centre etc) if was the try of badge that can unlock doors like most are these days even if they look simple it could present a security risk, as an example I used to work in a credit card customer service site, where all the account details we held for millions of customers, someone with the right skills could easily have made use of such a badge to access the centre...

Any loss would have to be reported to security as soon as possible we had 24/7 security so that they could deactivate the badge...

As everyone has said it's going to be a standard letter, and no one can advise what will happen
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dont want to say the employer name but its basically a large building company and the wife was a resident liason officer, promoting to lead liasion then given new role of tenant liason officer. . Becasue she has to go into peoples properties originally they supplied liason officers with personal attack alarms but these were a little cumbersome to carry around so recently switched to these tracker ID badges
 
I was going to say it sounded like your wife works for a housing association or local authority - They wear the same gadgets up here as well

Tell the wife to try and not to worry to much, likely she will just get a telling off and advice on how to keep stuff safe & secure in future
 
See if there's a colleague she can take in with her then, it'll put her mind at rest a little bit, if nothing else!

You'll probably find it is just the sort of meeting that could be done informally in most cases, but due to the size of the company there's hideous, paperwork-heavy procedures to follow for any sort of incident, which unfortunately means having to send letters which appear overly threatening. One perk of this is that they definitely can't just boot you out without going through the annoying procedures first (y)

(I've also just discovered the emoticon thingy for a jaffa cake, which has absolutely made my evening.)
:jaffa:
 
If it's a tracker, they should be able to say where the badge was last reported.
 
She doesn't have to go to this meeting alone and if possible shouldn't. She's entitled to take a friend in lieu of a union rep as a witness, failing that she should take a recording device of some kind to make sure any proceedings are recorded correctly for the records. She should be open about it but insistent if they object. If they won't allow its use she can call a halt until such time as a suitable witness can be found, including time for her to join and consult the union.

There's probably going to be nothing to worry about in the hearing but it does seem to be a heavy handed way of dealing with what appears to be a minor loss so going prepared will not hurt.

/edit just noticed you posted this last night so too late now I expect.
 
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Steep said:
She doesn't have to go to this meeting alone and if possible shouldn't. She's entitled to take a friend in lieu of a union rep as a witness, failing that she should take a recording device of some kind to make sure any proceedings are recorded correctly for the records. She should be open about it but insistent if they object. If they won't allow its use she can call a halt until such time as a suitable witness can be found, including time for her to join and consult the union.

There's probably going to be nothing to worry about in the hearing but it does seem to be a heavy handed way of dealing with what appears to be a minor loss so going prepared will not hurt.

/edit just noticed you posted this last night so too late now I expect.
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Don't join unions after the event because your in trouble joine before.
 
Her contract of employment will contain details of the various steps that can be taken by the employer.

Yes she is entitled to take someone with her as an advocate, but the employer can insist that it's not just "anyone" (such as a friend), and it really should be either a union rep, colleague, or a retained legal representative; but I'm betting that the letter was just the usual HR autoguff, and it's going to be just a verbal reminder that they consider the ID badges as important...don't do it again etc.

If she were to be dismissed over such a thing, with no previous disciplinary record, she'd have a damn good case at tribunal.
 
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well the results are in. firstly it turns out the bloody thing wasnt even activated, despite witnesses to contrary as they were all activated when handed out in the office ( she and 3 other members were guinea pigs for this device). so clearly it was faulty as the suppliers couldnt track it
the allegation is down to the fact that it wasnt reported straight away ( as mentioned above she "lost" it friday evening and after searching office monday for it reported it tuesday morning.
Seems all rather petty tbh and the upshot is an official verbal warning which is in her notes for 6 months. thankfully it wasnt me otherwise i think i would have told them where they can shove there verbal warning.
totally OTT at most it should have been an unofficial off the record word in here ear.
 
Firstly I'm glad for your wife, that it was nothing "worse" than a verbal warning. But I'm with you, I'd have been having words with them too.

Bloody typical, to infer that it's very serious, and there may well be consequences, and then "just" give a verbal, which must have been a great relief to your other half, and therefore she was more than "happy" to accept it . Thats a bit norty I feel.
 
Glad it went ok ish.
Only just read about it and did think it was a bit OTT. Its never nice being on the end of a diciplinary hearing, my first one was horrible. I had 3 periods of sick day in a year and a jumped up manager. Sadly tho for him, with the help of my union rep it worked out ok for me. All my sickness was documented with with doctors notes and all due to me being in car crash... He had overlooked this in his"case" against me. The HR rep chucked it out at the interview :)
 
In my opinion, they have shot themselves in the foot doing this. It was a very minor thing which should have been ignored.

I suspect now that if Dean's wife was asked to stay behind and finish something off or come in a bit early for some reason, before this she would have agreed. Now she would probably think twice about it and probably refuse - I know I would.

The good will involved with realising that people are human and mistakes happen is much more valuable than being seen to be authorative and doing things by the book.


Steve.
 
Glad it turned out okay. As others have said, suspect it was standard boilerplate letter (easier to have one letter for all circumstances rather than rewriting it out each time).
 
Steve Smith said:
The good will involved with realising that people are human and mistakes happen is much more valuable than being seen to be authorative and doing things by the book.
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A very important point. Drag someone over the coals for something minor and will cause ripples down the line.
 
dean messenger said:
well the results are in. firstly it turns out the bloody thing wasnt even activated, despite witnesses to contrary as they were all activated when handed out in the office ( she and 3 other members were guinea pigs for this device). so clearly it was faulty as the suppliers couldnt track it
the allegation is down to the fact that it wasnt reported straight away ( as mentioned above she "lost" it friday evening and after searching office monday for it reported it tuesday morning.
Seems all rather petty tbh and the upshot is an official verbal warning which is in her notes for 6 months. thankfully it wasnt me otherwise i think i would have told them where they can shove there verbal warning.
totally OTT at most it should have been an unofficial off the record word in here ear.
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It raises an interesting question, if this is being provided as part of her employers duties to ensure the safety of lone workers then it's clearly not suitable if it doesn't work.

I suspect there are two reasons why it raised concerns:
  1. It's a valid identification for a role with potential access to vulnerable persons and it's been lost. There's an identity security issue. Perhaps this wasn't made clear when she received the ID but anyone in her role should have basic identity security training and understand the importance of reporting a loss of identity document immediately.
  2. It's probably an over-priced gizmo that's sitting on someone's budget and it needs to be replaced, or the supplier compensated for the loss if it's been provided on a trial basis. That someone wants to make damn sure responsibility for the loss is on someone else.
The use of standard HR letters for this type of thing is rarely appropriate, it usually results in unnecessary stress. Point 1 above makes a verbal warning reasonable. Someone could have been using that ID for 3 days before your wife reported it missing. Yes it may have her photo on it, but no one every looks like their ID photo and the card alone gives enough credibility to explain away differences. If the presenter was the right skin colour and gender that would be enough for most people to accept an ID card with a quick glance.
 
I think it would be a safe bet to say the incompetent manager/boss who was responsible for implenting this new device onto the employees did not get disciplined for failing to ensure the device had been activated properly with the suppliers.
 
As an aside, whether the tracker was active or not is irrelevant.
It didn't chuck itself in the bin :lol:

At the end of the day it's a verbal with no permanent record.
Moving on would seem to be the next course of action.
 
omens said:
A very important point. Drag someone over the coals for something minor and will cause ripples down the line.
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Except they haven't been. A verbal is a nothing of a sanction. However, if I was said employee I would be less flexible re overtime, starting early as they've been quite rigid in following the letter of the handbook, but verbal means nothing in practice and I'd waste no time thinking on it.
 
Baaaaaaaack on topic...

This is a timely reminder of a number of things;

1. Be over-cautious with security. No-one ever got fired for being too cautious. (Actually, someone probably did. HR suck.)
2. Don't read too much into over-officious legalese at the foot of HR letters. My experience of HR people is that they can't think outside a very tightly defined box, so cling to template letters like a toddler clings to its favourite toy.
3. Always wait to see how the land lies before kicking off. Life doesn't have to be a series of endless battles (even if they can be fun when you're winning).
4. Eat more Jaffa cakes. This wasn't specifically highlighted by the issue at hand, but is more of a general rule.
 
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Does anyone else here hate the term Human Resource?

It turns your employees into a commodity. I much preferred it in Ye Olden Dayes™ when it was Personnel.


Steve.
 
I suppose it makes a change from being just a number
 
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