Gross misconduct dismissal

Undervalued

Jami74 said:

So if she hadn't reported her colleague sleeping, she'd still have a job?

You mean she might have got away with it?

Had the employer found out that she had failed to report a colleague sleeping on the job, the consequences would very likely have been the same.

joeypesci

Someone at our work, many years ago was fire for gross misconduct. He had proof that what he was fired for was also the fault of other people above him. So he won he's appeal and got a large payout. So as long as the person being accused of gross misconduct can prove it was through the fault of others, then they should be able to win on an appeal.

Purplelady65

Is there a policy or procedure in place stating exactly what steps are to be taken if a staff member finds another staff member asleep on duty? Has your friend received training in what to do if they come across a staff member asleep on duty and are unable to wake them? If there isn’t a policy and procedure in
place and your friend has never received any training on what to do in that situation then I would say she has grounds for appeal against her dismissal. Sleeping on duty at night is not that rare in the health and care sector but I’ve never heard of the person reporting it being dismissed! As OPs have said the irony is she has been dismissed for reporting her concerns whereas if she’d never said anything she’d probably still be in a job.  

LightFlare

Purplelady65 said:

Is there a policy or procedure in place stating exactly what steps are to be taken if a staff member finds another staff member asleep on duty? Has your friend received training in what to do if they come across a staff member asleep on duty and are unable to wake them? If there isn’t a policy and procedure in
place and your friend has never received any training on what to do in that situation then I would say she has grounds for appeal against her dismissal. Sleeping on duty at night is not that rare in the health and care sector but I’ve never heard of the person reporting it being dismissed! As OPs have said the irony is she has been dismissed for reporting her concerns whereas if she’d never said anything she’d probably still be in a job.  

I bet close to 100% of people never had.

Policies can’t and dont cover all eventualities and we dont know if the person broke other known policies In their handling of the situation.

kinger101

To me, the fact that they've been unable to highlight the precise reason for your dismissal and not given the correct action and stated where this is documented in their own internal procedures indicates they know something has gone very wrong but would rather fire you than hold themselves accountable.

The first questions for the employer should be

Did the amount of shifts given to the employee contribute to them being asleep on the job?

How many people were responsible for responding to the alarm? 

If it is one, what are my lone working procedures.  Can my alarm system escalate if it is not responded to?

Are my employees empowered to escalate situations where other employees are unfit for work on the spot?

What do I hope to achieve by firing the employee who notified me this incident, albeit late.  A culture of silence?

MrMagic

I read her appeal letter which was comprehensive. Their misconduct policy states instances of gross misconduct can be downgraded when there are mitigating factors, and there were quite a few. Each point was addressed in the letter. They didn't repond to any of these points (presumably they aren't required to). During the process the company added and then removed points of challege to her conduct. Not responding to room alarms was a central one. The alarm which sounded was indeed a room alarm (its an annexe housing eldery people and the like). She'd explained that she went to the residential corridor to do checks rather stay next to the sleeping staff member because she knew the alarms should be a priority, she just couldn't get into the area due to lack of a key. 

In the final letter the company said that during the appeal my friend had admitted to not wanting to wake the sleeping person up at all. My friend said this was nothing short of a lie because she had never said this. It isn't even recorded on minuites of meetings. They also stated she should have called the on-call service. The issue there was the only on-call list was in a locked office which she didn't have access to that office because of lack of key. They then claimed they had records she'd contacted the on call service a few days earlier, so she should have known who was on call. I'm not sure how one would have been expected to know this when lists change and/or remember an 11 digit number, but there you go. 

Its worth saying she person who fell asleep had forgotten their key and earlier in the day had appraoched my friend for hers because hey knew my friend would not be active in the area and so wouldnt require it. The company have not challenged the point about lending her key -  probably because its accepted practice and their own managers have been doing it for years. They used to have a spare contingency key which was removed. 

kinger101

If my role required me to respond to alarms and required me to have a key in order to respond, there is not a chance in hell I would lend it to someone.  

The errors are higher up.  It should not even be possible to come to work and not have the required keys.  The entire set you need should to in a key safe on the premises and issued at the start of the shift.

The conduct of the person in question is not great, but given the facility appears to be run without some level of basic competence, this to me is way short of gross misconduct.

I don't know if there is a regulatory body for these homes, but assuming the account you have given us accurate, I'd be blowing my whistle there.

But I am questioning the veracity of some of this.

Once sleeping beauty had woken, you could have retrieved the keys to get the emergency contact number to report them unfit for work.

General_Grant

CQC inspect care homes and nursing homes.

elsien

They do, and domiciliary as well, but they are not going to get involved in individual cases. They use the information more to decide on when the next inspection should be. I would certainly report if I were concerned but it's not going to have any effect on the sacked worker's case. 

MrMagic

Its quite interesting to see people stating that they would definitely have/ have not done XYZ. I've thought that too. Would we really, if there had been no policy and we had seen managers do the same? My friend said lending the key seemed reasonable under the circumstances because as she was not the person on shift in that area. She knew there were some spare keys to individual areas, but she discovered the sleeping person had locked those away.

"I am questioning the veracity of some of this. Once sleeping beauty had woken, you could have retrieved the keys to get the emergency contact number to report them unfit for work." - Yes definitely, I think i'd have done the same. In terms of varacity, obviously I dont have each and every detail in writing. I saw the dismissal letters and I discussed it with her for about an hour. I was posting here simply to get an idea about how companies are supposed to investigate, where people who have been dismissed go from there etc. Something didn't sit right about it for me, but i'm not in that line of work and I've certainly not been expecting a step-by step legal breakdown. I was just interested to see what people thought. 

Its interesting that the company didn't challenge my friend about giving the key at all. They seem to have floated a handful of points under a 'did not do enough' banner, then added and removed some over time. They didn't really specify what should have been done. How my friend was supposed to contact an on-call without access to a list or number confuses me. Whether it was still appropriate to call an on-call once the person had woken up, rather than reporting to the first manager who arrived can be debated. It was one of the 'mitigating factors' which the company have not commented on.

Its interesting that manager didn't esclate matters promptly. The sleeping person was back working again the next day alongside that manager. The way it was eventually raised is another subject, but when I was shown the information I immediately thought 'collusion'. 

I've since learned that my friend raised several unrelated concerns previously, including one to CQC. Regardless of the correctness of her actions (or lack thereof), I don't think there was much incentive for the company to keep her around. She told me the organisation had a different dismissal quite recently which was overturned via tribunal. From what i've been hearing if I had been working there i'd have left the place long before trouble began!