We all know that employment law is a minefield. Sometimes it may feel like there is legislation for everything and often there are lots of ‘buzz-words’ specific to employment law being bounced around. You wouldn’t be on your own if you thought that employment law is like another language! In an effort to help employers wade through these buzz-words and parts of legislation, we at Peninsula have created our very own Employment Law Dictionary! It’s simple, concise and easy to understand. Each month we represent a letter of the alphabet and associate a few words in employment law with that letter.
Warnings- See also ‘Disciplinary Hearing’ - Warnings are issued to employees where they have engaged in misconduct or where there are issues in respect of their competency in performing their working duties. Employers should be aware that warnings are meant to be “corrective” and not “punitive” and as a result warnings should only be issued in order to correct particular behaviour. As warnings must not be punitive, an employer must therefore ensure that warnings issued are reasonable.
Warnings tend to vary from a verbal warning, to a written warning, to a final written warning and ultimately a series of successive warnings may lead to dismissal.
Employers must ensure that any warning issued must have been through a fair and reasonable process and to do this an employer must ensure that a fair disciplinary hearing has been conducted.
Whistleblowing- Under certain limited circumstances, employees have legal protection if they make disclosures about organisations for whom they work. These employees are commonly referred to as ‘whistle blowers’ and their activities have often received wide publicity in the media. (Such an example is if an employee believes that the Company is in breach of its responsibilities in relation to the standards or quality of care provided to its service users and disclosed this fact to a regulator, customers, the Gardaí, the media or indeed the Company itself, may disclose this fact out of concern for the service users or out of concern that that Company would, for financial gain, attempt to ‘cover this up’ if asked to stop).
Employees, who blew the whistle on organisations, were often treated detrimentally by their employer or their employment was terminated. This discouraged employees from whistle blowing even where such action would be for the good of the public.
Working for a Competitor- See ‘Restrictive Covenant’ - As an employer, little can be more galling than seeing a good employee in whom you have invested time and money leave the business to join a competitor. However there are steps you can take as an employer to reasonably protect your legitimate business interest should an employee decide to leave to work for a competitor. These include a non-compete restrictive covenant in an employee’s contract of employment which could prevent them from working for a competitor, often within a specific geographical area, for a set period following termination.
