WRC recommends €750 after employer mishandled disciplinary warning

The WRC recommended that an employer pay a staff nurse €750 after finding that it had not followed its disciplinary procedures. In a decision dated 13 November 2023, the officer also recommended that the employer follow its own policies. The nurse said the employer placed a verbal warning on her file without a proper investigation or giving her a chance to respond. The employer accepted that the meeting did not comply with its procedures and withdrew the warning from her file by letter. The officer found that the meeting did not comply with the employer’s policies and that keeping the warning on file for six months was not reasonably open to it. The officer’s remit was to assess the fairness of the process, not to decide the truth of the allegation behind the warning.