Statutory disciplinary and grievance procedures must be used by employers from October 1

On 1 October the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004 come into force.
They lay down disciplinary, dismissal and grievance procedures that employers must follow when dealing with problems in the workplace or dismissing employees.

From 1 October, all employers will be required to issue a written document that sets out their disciplinary rules and the new minimum procedures.

The new legislation provides a new minimum standard, it doesn’t replace any existing procedures that exceed it.

But employers who have not had any formal procedures in place, or issued written details to their employees – and if they had less than 20 employees, the former threshold at which employers had a legal duty to provide details of disciplinary procedures, in many case they probably hadn’t – will now have to provide a written document that sets out the rules and minimum procedures.

Failure by employers to follow the procedures when dismissing someone will, in most cases, make the dismissal automatically unfair.