Gross misconduct

Africanlion

Hi
I am being investigated for gross mksconduct at work. I work for the civil service and I downloaded some material and emailed it to my personal email address. I regret it deeply. We havent had a meetimg with the decision maker yet but had a chat where he advised me an investigation is jnder wsy. The stuff is both racist and sexist. So yiu get the full picture I downloaded memes (funny pictures to use as status or profile pics on whatsapp and stuff). The racist angle is the pics had the word n**ger and the sexist angle is they had wh*res in them. I am a black person myself so I wasnt seeking to offend or insult anyone and it was sent to MY own email not to anyone else. In hindsight it was a stpid thing to do.

Mh qjestion is will I be sacked? Just 8 months ago at my end of year appraisal I achieved an Exceeded which is the highest marking and got a bonus. My mid year for this current year was also very good. Apart from this my record is clean

What your thoughts please. Should I resign before I am dismissed? I am very distraught

Thanks

ElefantEd

There's no point resigning. Wait and see what the outcome of the enquiry is. Whilst you have undoubtedly breached the internet usage policies of the civil service, they may well take the view that as this is a first offence, and no real harm was done, that it only warrants a written warning. Be very apologetic. Make sure they know you realise that you've done something foolish and have learned your lesson. If you are a good worker they will not want to get rid of you and have the effort and expense of replacing you.

An investigation is just that: there is no need to panic. Wait and see what the result is!

Masomnia

As above you're best being honest and apologetic, accept you made a mistake and you learned from it. Lying about it will almost certainly result in your dismissal if they find out. I'm sure you wouldn't, but still...

In your favour as you say you just sent it to yourself, it's not confidential Civil Service information which would be more serious and you've got an unblemished record.

How did they find out and is anyone else in the office aware of it? If no one else is aware and you didn't share it with colleagues then that is in your favour too. I would say that sending racist material to your colleagues is very serious, but just keeping it to yourself is less so.

In terms of resigning. If you do, they could hold the hearing anyway and dismiss you for gross misconduct during your notice - they don't have to allow you to resign with immediate effect. So it's entirely up to you but I would suggest you go to the hearing (if it happens) and plead your case.

Africanlion

Thanks for your input so far. Apparently there is software that triggers a warning at some office somewhere once it identifies certain words. I have already been shown the material and it as I said. They gave me paperwork relating to it. The meeting is more fact finding I think for me to state my case. The material definitely wasnt shared or seen by anyone else apart from me.

antonic

I would suggest that you have breached the Civil Service Acceptable Use Policy for computers.

Your skin colour is irrelevant when the policy is breached, and as you say, I do think that what you have downloaded has triggered an alarm, and has been flagged for further investigation.

Its irrelevant whether you shared the material, the fact is you downloaded it at work.

Are you a Union member and have you had secured Union representation for any planned meetings ?.

Good luck

(I write this a Civil Servant of many years, so I know how the system works).

TELLIT01

Hopefully this will just end up with a (final) warning, but does help illustrate the dangers when using work IT for personal use. In a previous life I was responsible for IT at one location (this was for a major financial organisation) and got a call from the team responsible for virus prevention. They had received a call from a staff member at my office worried they might have a virus on their PC. It turned out they did, but that ended up being the least of their worries. As part of the cleanup the virus team had scanned the local harddrive and discovered a load of !!!!!!. Apparently not particularly excessive in content, but obviously in breach of all access rules. I had no option but to report it to our office boss and that person also came within an ace of being sacked on the spot.

Rowan_moon

Africanlion wrote: »

Hi
The stuff is both racist and sexist. So yiu get the full picture I downloaded memes (funny pictures to use as status or profile pics on whatsapp and stuff). The racist angle is the pics had the word n**ger and the sexist angle is they had wh*res in them. I am a black person myself so I wasnt seeking to offend or insult anyone and it was sent to MY own email not to anyone else. In hindsight it was a stpid thing to do.

Thanks

You weren't seeking to offend anyone? So the sexist word you used was not meant to be offensive to women? Are you really sorry or just sorry you got caught? You posted it to yourself but also go on to say to be used as profile pics etc. If are lucky enough to keep your job I hope you get why your employer is taking this so seriously.

Lavendyr

Will you be sacked? Who can say? Plead stupidity (for frankly, that is what it is, I'm afraid) and promise you won't do it again. But anything that sexist or racist has the potential to be grounds for gross misconduct. You've been an idiot. Just grovel and plead - and be prepared to be under very close watch going forward if you do get to stay.

daytona0

Have to be careful of possible positive discrimination here too...

paddyrg

I think you just need to play your cards absolutely straight - "I own up, I was stupid, I have no intention of doing this again, I have learned a lesson from this. I'm certain my accounts will be closely scrutinised in the future, so please allow me to make amends and continue to be a loyal serving employee" kind of thing. Show absolute contrition, that you do and will make a positive contribution, and that you're aware they may place conditions on your continued employment.

RuthnJasper

A few years ago, our IT filtering system picked up a colleague doing something similar. He got a telling-off and a written warning.


Unfortunately, the fool did it again. This time he was sacked.


I am sorry for your predicament, but I simply cannot imagine why you thought this was an acceptable thing to do. Quite apart from the foul nature of what you downloaded, don't you think your managers will want to know why you were looking at and downloading filth instead of getting on with your work?