How bad does this sound?

Hootie19

My husband is a data centre engineer. He is on call this week.

He received a call at 3am. It turned out to be a major problem. He tried to deal with it himself, but after about 2.75 hours, he called his boss.

His boss sent him to the data centre "just to be on hand if they needed him". They didn't and he left there (after a call from his boss) at 9am

He was then sent home to get some sleep and told to go back to the office for 4pm

Upshot is, they don't think he should have waited so long to call his boss and are taking it to disciplinary. As soon as possible, but probably Friday.

He has been told not to go to work tomorrow, has been taken off his on call for tonight, and has been given restricted access to the company's intranet/computer system "in case he decided to get malicious and start deleting stuff".

He has nothing in writing. His boss wasn't around when he got to the office, and he had a "brief chat" with No.2 and No.3 in the department managerial heirarchy, in the office, when he went through what had happened and what actions he took. They went off and had a talk together and came back to the room to tell him they were taking it to a disciplinary. They said he should have realised sooner how major a problem it was and called his boss sooner.

The person who he reports to (the one between him and the boss) hadn't been told anything about this - he only knew when DH told him as he was leaving the office. He knew there had been an issue overnight, but didn't know about the meeting. The boss was nowhere to be seen.

That's the very bare facts.

Any advice or opinions? I know that there's not much to go on here. I've got him sitting at the PC writing down everything he can remember of what happened after the call at 3am, so I may be able to give more details later. Didn't want to waffle unnecessarily.

Obviously we're very worried. Just hoping they don't dismiss him. At 51 years of age, he's not overly hopefuly about finding something else.

dmg24

Do they have a major incident plan? How major was it? When I did this sort of work, we would make a judgment call based on the impact to business. Would anything have happened differently if he had called them?

CFC

How long has he worked for this employer?
Was he attempting to fix the problem from home?
Has he been given any guidelines or long experience as to how long he should attempt to fix the problem for before calling for assistance?
Has he got any previous documented history as to conversations touching on his competence or judgement?

Hootie19

dmg24 wrote: »

Do they have a major incident plan? How major was it? When I did this sort of work, we would make a judgment call based on the impact to business. Would anything have happened differently if he had called them?

They do have a major incident plan. It was issued via email four years ago. DH does not have a printed version, and now he's been given restricted access to the computer system, can't get one. He has asked one of his collagues to try and get hold of a copy and email it to him.

He does not believe anything different would have happened had he called his boss. On past experience (this is not the first time this type of incident has happened) his boss would have told him to carry on and keep him informed.

They look after recruitment databases for their clients, so business wise, as their websites were down, candidates could not submit their job applications which may have held up their clients' processes.

Hootie19

CFC wrote: »

How long has he worked for this employer?
Was he attempting to fix the problem from home?
Has he been given any guidelines or long experience as to how long he should attempt to fix the problem for before calling for assistance?
Has he got any previous documented history as to conversations touching on his competence or judgement?

He has worked there for four years.

He was doing what he could from home, but as it turned out, it was nothing that his company could fix. It was an external supplier's problem that had to be fixed from their end.

As said above, there is a major incident plan, which he is trying to get a copy of. They are used to similar problems in the past, but this was bigger than they've had before.

There is nothing in the past to suggest he is other than competent at his job. There have been no past problems with the way he has handled things.

dmg24

Hootie19 wrote: »

They do have a major incident plan. It was issued via email four years ago. DH does not have a printed version, and now he's been given restricted access to the computer system, can't get one. He has asked one of his collagues to try and get hold of a copy and email it to him.

He does not believe anything different would have happened had he called his boss. On past experience (this is not the first time this type of incident has happened) his boss would have told him to carry on and keep him informed.

They look after recruitment databases for their clients, so business wise, as their websites were down, candidates could not submit their job applications which may have held up their clients' processes.

Difficult - the fact that he does not have a hard copy of the plan is not relevant to the disciplinary. However, he can formally request a copy now that he does not have access.

I think he needs to emphasise the fact that he was working hard to resolve the problem, so did not want to distract himself from that by informing someone who could not do anything constructive. You need to think about what their response to that will be, and try to have answers to this.

Hootie19

He has said that the problem was escalated from his company, to their supplier, and then on to their supplier. It was nothing that his company could do to fix.

He likened it to our home network going wrong, so we contacted our ISP, who then discovered that it was a problem with their ISP, and then their ISP had to escalate it up to their ISP.

So the problem was two steps further along the process than his company.

He said that when he woke his boss, he [the boss] then spoke to the company's internal managers and also the account managers who deal with the company "next in line".

His employers said that if he'd called earlier, they could have raised the issue with theri supplier, and then their supplier could have done the same etc.

This still wouldn't have got the problem fixed any quicker, as DH had been speaking to the people he normally deals with on the supplier's helpdesk, who were aware of the problem.

dmg24

This is one of those no win situations - if he takes responsibility, he is disciplined for it. If he hadn't taken responsibility, he could have been disciplined for that too! If they do want to take this further, perhaps you could ask them to quantify the potential loss to the company (I wouldn't ask before gauging how far they are going to take it)? Any action they take has to be reasonable in the circumstances, so no (or limited) loss should really be a training opportunity rather than a dismissal. Obviously the greater the loss, the more likely dismissal is.

Hootie19

Thanks dmg. The company has not or will not have suffered any losses as a result of DH's actions, or lack of them. The problem lay with a company two steps further up the line, and they fixed it as soon as they could.

*IF* our household insurance has legal cover with it (I'll check the files and policy document later), do you think he should try for legal representaion, or would that just indicate that he's running scared?

Googlewhacker

maybe a reinforcing of the procedures at the most because nearly 3 hours does seem along time but if no losses were incurred (either directly or indirectly) then I can't see the pt of a disciplinary (unless they want to get rid of him!)

Hootie19

Thanks googlewhacker - he's now wonder if that's exactly what IS happening. A horrible position to be in.