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Disciplinary Advice.

Clayre Patricia

A member of our team is an administrator on a closed FB group associated with their speciality. Their line manager who is part of the group discovered that they had shared a document over 12 months ago which at the time was created by them under her MD's instruction for service / Sales provision without authorisation. Although the document contains a lot of generic information which are used by other companies the other information, format, design and purpose of the document is solely for business use.

An investigation has taken place, and recommended disciplinary action as per the policy as the issue was classed as ' misconduct' in so much as although the document contained some generic information the content, structure and layout of the document was specifically part of a new internal document for sales purposes and now forms the main body of the document which has been in use since this time.  

At the disciplinary meeting the person has contested the minutes saying they are not accurate or relevant and also they are using the fact that in their specialty field that this common practice and they were following suit. They have picked holes in every aspect of the report and evidence and is citing bias as the reason why the report is invalid.  As investigatory officer ( from a sister company- we are very small in numbers) I cited an example of how as a member of CIPD documents were shared but it was always privately and under the agreement of the person or organisation who owned the document.  I hasten to add, no one requested the document it was only shared to show them what they was doing. They are using my lack of knowledge in her field as reason for the investigation being incorrect!!

They have repeatedly changed the disciplinary meeting times they are is 'too busy' and don't have time to review or prepare for meetings due to their workload and is stating that the MD has 'it in for them' but when asked about this further can cite no evidence of doing so. We have given them time off to seek legal help and assisted her with moving dates.  Under our policy she was given 5 working days notice of each stage of the investigation and disciplinary process and again despite plenty of notice has just requested the date to be moved again.

They have also removed their line manager and the company from the closed FB page. 

 This person is currently being informally performance managed which occurred before the discovery of the document.

 Her disciplinary invited stated that it may lead to 'first written warning'.

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  • Isn't this all a lot of fuss over something that happened a long time ago and at worst is a first written warning. Draw it to a conclusion. Either issue the warning or don’t and let her appeal. .

    You are taking up huge amounts of management and organisational time on this. Step back and look at the bigger picture. It sounds like it was a genuine innocent offence to me.
  • in reply to Keith
    I agree. It sounds very much like the sharing of good practice with other specialists rather than divulging company secrets. I for one greatly appreciate being able to share that kind of thing on this forum.

    I think my approach would be along the lines of
    a) was there anything proprietorial in the document?
    b) would it be reasonable to expect that your employee would treat it as confidential?
    c) if yes to either of the above, set clear standards for the employee in the future (and all other employees if you really want a culture where this kind of document isn't shared), monitor, deal with any further issues

    The fact that this has escalated to a disciplinary rather than a management conversation sounds like there are wider problems with this relationship.
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  • in reply to Keith
    I agree. It sounds very much like the sharing of good practice with other specialists rather than divulging company secrets. I for one greatly appreciate being able to share that kind of thing on this forum.

    I think my approach would be along the lines of
    a) was there anything proprietorial in the document?
    b) would it be reasonable to expect that your employee would treat it as confidential?
    c) if yes to either of the above, set clear standards for the employee in the future (and all other employees if you really want a culture where this kind of document isn't shared), monitor, deal with any further issues

    The fact that this has escalated to a disciplinary rather than a management conversation sounds like there are wider problems with this relationship.
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