Human Resources

Recommendation

1. Adequate notice must be given to the accused employee:

Should be held thorough investigation has been conducted. Many employers act with unseemly haste. In the heat of the moment and with the desire to get rid of the workers as fast as possible, they may give him inadequate time to prepare. An absolute time would be 48 hours. The employer needs more time to carry out a proper investigation. The employer should never come to the inquiry unprepared. All the facts of the matter should have been carefully collected long before a decision to call an inquiry is made. Witnesses will have been identified and preliminary statements will have been taken down. This material is necessary in order to frame the charges against the employee.

1. Availability of witnesses and evidence:

For an inquiry to be fair, the worker charged with misconduct must be given the opportunity to confront any witnesses and question them. Any documentary evidence should be shown to the worker. A written record must be kept of the proceedings which should be signed by the worker as well as the officer in-charge of the inquiry. To avoid later disagreements, the original handwritten record, preferably in a notebook rather than on loose sheets, should be carefully stored. There have been occasions when management have been accused of tampering with the inquiry notes. It will be hard for the company to disprove such allegations when the record is typed on loose sheets obviously at a later time.

1. Impartiality of the inquiry panel:

The inquiry panel are the judges in the domestic inquiry. They must decide, based on the evidence presented during the inquiry. The must decide, based on the evidence presented during the inquiry, whether the accused employee is guilty or not of the charges against him. Most panels consist of at least three members who should be carefully chosen. They must be unbiased and impartial. Usually three managers, who are not immediate superiors of the accused worker, will be chosen to sit on the panel. The officer who conducted the preliminary investigation should not sit on the panel. He may act as the prosecutor. The panel is responsible for hearing all the evidences and making a decision as to whether the worker is guilty of the charges against him or not. They will present their findings in a report to the employer. Once an employee has been found guilty of misconduct by an inquiry panel, the senior management of the organization concerned will decide on a suitable penalty, which may well be dismissal.