Category Archives: Disciplinary
Sharon Shoesmith: guilt and unfair dismissal are two different things.
The papers are awash with articles about Sharon Shoesmith and Haringey Council. Ed Balls was Children’s Secretary in December 2008 when he publically called for Ms Shoesmith to be dismissed. Haringey Council obliged.
Sharon Shoesmith took her case to an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal. The Tribunal decided that she had not been unfairly dismissed. She appealed and three Appeal Court judges ruled that she was indeed unfairly dismissed. Since Friday the papers have been full of comments from all sides. According to an article on the BBC news website [1] David Cameron (Prime Minister) is uncomfortable with this decision and has stated that he believes elected ministers should be able to make decisions about their own departments. I totally agree with this statement. ALL managers should be able to make decisions about their own teams, BUT they must act within the law.
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Tackling alcohol abuse
This post reflects TimelessTime consultants’ experience in managing problems associated with alcohol abuse by employees. This experience covers all grades of staff including directors.
The problem begins with definition and description. What is it? It is abuse? Or alcoholism? And does it have to be at work? Can there be issues that spill from home to the workplace? Don’t people have the right to do what they want in their own time? The definition is not easy. The issue is the degradation of an employee’s capability through being under the influence of alcohol at work. It doesn’t matter when the alcohol was consumed. What matters is that capability is impaired.
Empower your managers: let them manage
We recently worked with a firm that had a strange management structure. We were asked to suggest corrective action when the incidence of disciplinary and grievance went sky-high.
The firm employed Regional Managers each responsible for several centres geographically spread across the UK. Each centre was managed by a Centre Manager. In any situation where the Centre Manager needed to exert his or her authority, the effect was diluted because Centre Managers were not allowed to discipline the staff under them. Only Regional Managers could discipline. Any appeals were heard by the Director, the Regional Managers’ boss.
