Refreshing Law
Our latest video is available to view on the Refreshing Law YouTube channel – please click here to watch the video in which Anna discusses a recent case (Woodhead v WTTV Ltd) that raises issues around the employer’s duty of care and also procedural fairness in employment cases.
Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law
From time to time you may send out a letter offering an employee, via a protected conversation, a settlement package. In a case called Meaker v Cyxtera Technology UK Ltd, the employee, in receipt of such a letter marked “without prejudice” believed that that letter constituted an effective dismissal. This is because the letter set out the particular date the employer was proposing that he would leave, the different payments he would get and when. He argued that this was a sufficiently clear letter to be a dismissal when it came to bringing an unfair dismissal claim under the Employment Rights Act 1996.
The relevance of this in the Employment Tribunal was whether he had brought his claim in time. If the “without prejudice” letter did, as he said, constitute a dismissal then his claim was going to be out of time. Alternatively, if the date of dismissal was the date on which he received payment in lieu of notice and holiday payment, then his claim was going to be in time.
The Tribunal agreed that the “without prejudice” letter was an effective letter of dismissal but the employee appealed. The Employment Appeal Tribunal agreed that that letter created a clear decision to dismiss, even though it was marked “without prejudice” and enclosed a draft Settlement Agreement, without terms providing for a mutual termination not having, in fact, been agreed. In effect, both the Tribunals viewed the letter as terminating the employee’s contract unilaterally.
As always the background facts were case specific – the employee had hurt his back and couldn’t do his job but wasn’t so severely affected that he met the test for income protection to kick in. There had been numerous discussions about what to do next. The employer sent the offer letter and draft settlement following a discussion with HR and actually processed the payment in lieu of notice even though agreement had not been reached.
The first moral of the story is never ever make payments in connection with a settlement agreement until it is all sorted!
This case has, however, given me reason to go back and review the standard kind of offer letter that I see on a regular basis: where the employers will state a termination date for example, the payment in lieu of notice that might be made, payment in lieu of holiday that might be made and an ex gratia payment that might be given in addition to things like reference and other benefits like outplacement counselling.
Employers run the risk that these letters can be seen as dismissal letters (any employee who has ever been on the receiving end of such an offer letter will tell you that they feel that it’s such a strong signal from the employer that the relationship is over and that they could not in fact continue). Is it worth drafting them in a different way to account for this risk? For example, instead of setting out a termination date, you may suggest to the employee that a leaving date would be agreed when the terms of a settlement agreement are agreed – this leaves it uncertain.
Secondly, the employer may wish to clarify that in no way should the employee take receipt of the letter as indicating any intention to bring their employment to an end.
You might also decide to say that holiday pay is something that would have to be agreed once the parties have discussed what the accrued holiday actually is.
Alternatively, you need to be aware that every time you do provide such an offer letter that it is open to the employee to argue that it brings an end to their employment, despite the fact that it is marked “without prejudice” and probably subject to a protected conversation.
Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law
You will be familiar with the idea that in a disciplinary process the person who is accused of wrongdoing should hear the case against them or should hear or be told the important parts of the evidence in support of that case so that they are given the opportunity to criticise or dispute that evidence and put forward their own arguments. This comes from a case of Spink -v- Express Foods Limited 1990. But what about the situation where there is a grievance investigation?
The Acas Code is silent on this issue but focuses instead on the person who has raised the complaint. However, as part of the investigation into the complaints that that person has raised, you will need to interview anyone that they have accused of wrongdoing. For example, there may be an allegation of bullying and harassment.
One option would be to simply show the person, perhaps the line manager, the grievance letter. This is the most open and transparent position and one would hope that any line manager would behave professionally, see the grievance for what it is, and be prepared to answer those allegations in full. This position accords with the concept of ‘natural justice’ – nothing is being hidden and the accused has full opportunity to have their input to what is being said about them.
However, there may be cases where there is a concern that to take this open position would perhaps inflame or fundamentally damage the working relationship between the person who has raised the grievance and, for example, their line manager. The investigator may feel that a better approach would be to not show the full letter to the person who has been accused but rather to take them through the contents of the letter through a process of questioning so that they still have full opportunity to answer what is being said, but perhaps in doing this they can soften the language a little and take some of the ‘heat’ out of the matter. If the investigator does go down this route they will need to be skilled in questioning and make sure that they do give the full picture to the person so that they are being fair to everybody. For example, it wouldn’t be appropriate to just say ‘what happened on 5th August?’ You would need to go further and ask ‘Joe Bloggs has stated that there was an argument between the two of you on 5th August. He has said that your voice was raised and that other people noticed that you were shouting. Is that true?’
If the complainant’s letter refers to complaints against a number of different people then, again, it may be sensible to separate out the allegations so that you are only interviewing an individual about those matters that are relevant to them.
In any event, if the individual (for example, the line manager) is named in a grievance letter, strictly speaking, under the Data Protection Act, they can make a Subject Access Request requesting to see the contents of the letter. For that reason, again, the employer may want to choose the most open position.
It could also be damaging, as regards the relationship between the employer and the person who has been accused (such as the line manager), if the employer does not disclose the contents of a grievance letter. The line manager may feel that something is being hidden or that they are not being given a full opportunity to answer the case against them, even though at this stage there is no hint of a disciplinary.
The employer will need to carefully weigh all of these issues before deciding how to proceed. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law
Workers have the statutory right to reasonably request to be accompanied at a disciplinary or grievance hearing.
The first thing to note is that your meeting needs to be one at which some kind of disciplinary outcome will be arrived at or decision made as to whether a grievance is upheld – there is no right to be accompanied at investigation stages in the process although many employers go above and beyond their duties and allow it.
The request should relate to being accompanied either by a colleague or a trade union representative. Generally speaking there is no right to bring along your lawyer or your mother!
For a long time we’ve advised people that the word ‘reasonably’ used in the legislation gives you some wriggle room: if the employee was asking to be accompanied by a colleague who is also under investigation there could be a conflict of interests with them trying to ‘cook up a story’ together or that if the employee was asking for someone from your farthest flung location to come it might be unreasonable when there were various colleagues onsite and available.
However recent case law changes all this. The Employment Appeal Tribunal had to decide if the employer can decide the person chosen is unreasonable and reject the worker’s choice.
In the case of Toal v GB Oils, the workers wanted to be accompanied by a particular trade union official which the employer refused, instead allowing them to bring a different one.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal rejected the employer’s argument that the word ‘reasonably’ in the legislation applies to the choice of companion as well as to the request to be accompanied.
This was despite the ACAS Code guidance that ‘it would not normally be reasonable for workers to insist on being accompanied by a companion whose presence would prejudice the hearing’. The EAT pointed out that the Code cannot help in the construction of the law, which is a role purely for the courts.
So now as long as the chosen companion comes within one of the permitted categories, then there can be no interference with the worker’s choice and employers interfere with that choice at their peril.
Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law
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