Time Sheet Lies

AndyNorwich

Remove please

Bradden

Interesting question... legally I guess you could dismiss her for attempting to obtiain payment by deception.

jobbingmusician

What do you mean by 'instant dismissal'? You are going down a dangerous route even thinking about it!

In order to dismiss fairly (and yes, you may be able to do this ) you need to follow your own disciplinary procedure. And if you don't have one, look on the ACAS site for a model one. To show good practice, you should suspend the employee, have an investigation, and call a disciplinary meeting, at which she is entitled to be accompanied. If, FOLLOWING THE INVESTIGATION, you believe falsification of a timesheet to be gross misconduct (which is probably is, IF the disciplinary process concludes that she did it without good excuse) you should warn her in the letter inviting her to the meeting that the allegations, if proved, may form GM and lead to dismissal. Any indication to the employee that you have pre-judged the case before a disciplinary hearing might be judged by a Tribunal as not being the actions of a reasonable employer.

For example, if an employee simply lying about her leave time would probably be guilty of GM. An employee who has been told by a manager that they can do this once every 60 days would probably not. You need to hear the employee's case and THEN make a judgement, having first made absolutely sure that this employee signed out at the time stated bla bla.....

edited to add: One of the things your investigation should address, to protect you, is whether falsification of timesheets is endemic throughout the company. You don't want to run the risk of being seen to victimise one employee!

AndyNorwich

Shes our only employee and ever since we took this place on has been nothing but trouble and anti what we are trying to do for some reason

jd87

You've made it very obvious here that you want her out and are looking for any possible excuse to get rid of her. If you want to dismiss her because of this then you'll have to follow the advice given to you above, and completely change your tone.

jobbingmusician

OK, so the investigation may have already taken place. I take it 'we' is you and your wife or business partner? You do need to check that the rest of the 'we' didn't give her permission to sign out as at 6pm. And you DO NEED to have a proper disciplinary meeting, where she has a right to bring a friend.

I would suggest that you set an early disciplinary (you may have to delay this in order to give her time to find a friend to accompany her). Also, is your username your real name? If so, you might like to consider whether your first post in this thread could be used as evidence that you had decided to dismiss your employee before holding a disciplinary hearing..............

jobbingmusician

Just read your previous posts. For heaven's sake, can you really not afford £1500 to get rid of her through redundancy without risk of a tribunal? It doesn't matter HOW carefully you do the disciplinary, if she's seen and taken screenshots of your posts in this thread a lawyer will cost you £1500 in no time..........