Disciplinary procedures and the employment contract
How to communicate your disciplinary rules and procedures and whether or not to make them contractual.
You must inform each employee in writing about:
- your disciplinary rules
- your disciplinary and dismissal procedure
- the name of the person that they should appeal to if they are unhappy about a disciplinary or dismissal decision
You can either include this in their written statement of employment or refer in the statement to where they can find the information, eg, in a staff handbook.
If you fail to provide this information to an employee and they succeed in an industrial tribunal claim against you, they could be awarded two or four weeks' pay.
The status of disciplinary procedures
Current legislation stipulates that an employer must provide their employee with a written statement of employment within two months of commencing employment. This statement should also include a note specifying any disciplinary rules applicable to the employee and who they should address any appeals to if they are dissatisfied with a disciplinary/dismissal decision.
This information can be provided in a separate document as long as this is reasonably accessible to the employee. Many employers opt to provide these documents by way of written procedures that are simply appended to the written statement.