Mock Employment Tribunal - Event Summary
Adding to the Lawson-West catalogue of seminars and events, we ran a mock employment tribunal on November 9th at our Leicester office.
The meeting room area was set up to replicate a court room setting and three barristers from London firm The 36 Group were in attendance too, with one acting as a Judge.
The tribunal was centred on the (fictional) case of an events manager (the claimant) who felt he had been unfairly dismissed, his former manager and current company MD (the respondent) and the companies HR manager.
The manager was the first to be cross examined; he had to defend his decision to hold a meeting with the claimant without an HR representative being in attendance. He was unable to produce any notes taken during the meeting which caused disparity with his communication around setting set tasks as part of a performance review than simply as suggestions as they were perceived by the claimant.
The claimant’s laptop had broken and he had been left to his own devices to get it fixed rather than receiving any IT support from the company (or his manager). He was berated for not knowing key information that he was emailed despite advising the manager on several occasions that the IT problems were preventing him opening attachments yet no alternative provision was made.
Next was the HR manager, not only should she have ensured she attended any meetings between the claimant and respondent (but did not); she also failed to contact the former company MD who may have been able to present the claimant in a better light and allow further clarity on his performance because the respondent didn’t want her to.
The final person to take to the stand was the claimant himself. He had to answer a series of questions about his time at the company and his performance in general. He had maintained a good working relationship with the firmer company MD and had not worked with the respondent for long. Their first meeting didn’t go particularly well but concluded with the claimant saying he would take on board the respondent’s suggestions moving forward.
He explained the situation with his company laptop and that the delay in it being fixed was the reason we was not able to access certain documentation emailed to him. When challenged about not managing to cut his costs and event expenditure the claimant explained he did what he could but felt that reducing costs would compromise the quality of the events he ran.
The tribunal ended with the Judge’s summary and his conclusion; the claimant had been unfairly dismissed.
This was for numerous reasons including the IT issues being out of his control, the lack of communication from senior management to ensure he knew exactly what was expected of him, the lack of internal HR procedure and the communication between the respondent and HR manager before and after his appeal which made it look like his dismissal was a forgone conclusion.
The event was a fascinating insight into an employment tribunal; it was very well received by the attendees.
Lawson-West representatives had the following comments:
“I thoroughly enjoyed this event. It was incredibly interesting to see how individual component parts all fit together to build a picture and to get to the root of finding out who was right and wrong.” – Joanne Hancock, Marketing Executive
“Employment law is one of the biggest and quickly developing departments at Lawson-West. We have an expert team on hand to represent you if you have faced any type of work place problem.” – David Heys, Managing Director.
As an employer you do not want to end up in a tribunal it is therefore, imperative that you seek legal advice from the outset to ensure that you follow a fair procedure and handle matters fairly. Lawson West Solicitors can advise from the outset right up to the tribunal if you therefore, require our assistance please contact one of the Employment team on 0116 212 1000/ 01858 445 480 or email events@lawson-west.co.uk if you would like to attend one of our seminars.
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