Where do I stand?

dbg1986

Hello everyone

back in late February I had a disciplinary where my integrity and trustworthiness was brought into question. 

It was found it was very minor and a first warning would be sufficient.
at the time I asked for this to be confidential and who would know about the situation, I was told obviously the management taken the action and my line manager and head of hr , so only 4 people.

since then it has got out about this disciplinary and chinease whispers have started and the rumours are very disturbing and makes me sound a very very bad person (which is not the truth).

this has made me feel betrayed by the higher management and now make me feel I can no longer work at this company.

do I have any legal ground for constructive dismissal if I leave?

GeordieGeorge

Not very likely, it’s a very high bar to clear. 

74jax

dbg1986 said:

Hello everyone

back in late February I had a disciplinary where my integrity and trustworthiness was brought into question. 

It was found it was very minor and a first warning would be sufficient.
at the time I asked for this to be confidential and who would know about the situation, I was told obviously the management taken the action and my line manager and head of hr , so only 4 people.

since then it has got out about this disciplinary and chinease whispers have started and the rumours are very disturbing and makes me sound a very very bad person (which is not the truth).

this has made me feel betrayed by the higher management and now make me feel I can no longer work at this company.

do I have any legal ground for constructive dismissal if I leave?

I would be concerned if people were talking about the truth, but as no one knows what happened and are making it up (maybe someone saw you in a meeting room etc) then I can't see what you could do about it?  It's gossip, now if someone knew the truth then I'd definately want to know which of the 4 told someone else. 

Jsacker

Will have to run that past Union/ACAS if you want a definitive answer (well, as close as you'll get to one for free).

Scenarios which I think may, at a push, qualify for constructive dismissal include:

- The company owing you a duty of care with confidential information and them dropping the ball. But given you speak about "chinease whispers" (Xi Jinping is not amused!) which you state are false, it doesn't appear to be the case that the TRUE information has been leaked. So that doesn't seem to be an issue.

- If you can show that one of the 4 people privy to the information is spreading FAKE INFORMATION around your team. Your line manager would be the most likely candidate (but I caveat that by saying that I think it is very unlikely that they are doing this!). It would be a "managing them out of the business" situation which might well morph into constructive dismissal, if you can prove it, given it would very likely be outside of the normal disciplinary process.



BUT "occam's razor" here... The possibility with the smallest number of assumptions is usually correct (the above second point, which I think is the only realistic one, assumes your manager has a hidden motive). So I doubt there's a "constructive dismissal" angle here. But I'm not an expert and so you never know (have to pay big money for that opinion!).


As a side note, what your colleagues are doing MIGHT be defamation towards you. That's sort of between you and the person involved, but MAY involve the company, too (mainly covered in the rest of my post I THINK). You technically can't say negative things about someone which are untrue, and which aren't an "honest opinion", and which damage someone's reputation. Your problem is that it is costly to bring a defamation case, and probably harder than a "constructive dismissal" case here. Sucks, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

gettingtheresometime

Who knew about the original allegation?

Im guessing it was more than the 4 people involved in your disciplinary, people guessed you were disciplined & have invented what happened.

of course you could always shut the rumour mill down immediately by telling the actual facts (ah if only our politicians learnt this simple lesson), this gossip will become tomorrow's old news immediately