Procedures and legal frameworks involved in initiating disciplinary actions, conducting hearings, and ensuring fairness throughout the process. Additionally, you’ll gain skills in chairing hearings effectively, managing evidence, and making impartial decisions while upholding employee rights and organisational policies.
Initiating and chairing a disciplinary hearing is a critical responsibility for employers and managers when addressing employee misconduct or performance issues. This process aims to ensure fairness, transparency, and compliance with company policies and legal regulations.
Course Content
- Introduction.
- The basis of the relationship.
- Duties of an employee.
- Duties of employers.
- Discipline: An employer’s duty.
- Discipline.
- Positive and negative discipline within the workplace.
- Characteristics of a sound disciplinary system.
- Disciplinary codes and procedures.
- Types of offences.
- Particular offences.
- Practical application of disciplinary procedures.
- Seven rules of just cause.
- Types of rules.
- Enforce-ability of rules.
- Legal framework of discipline within organisations.
- Verbal warnings.
- Written warnings .
- Other disciplinary alternatives.
- Duration of warnings.
- Responsibility of disciplinary action.
- Disciplinary hearing.
- Appeals against sanctions short of dismissal or decisions to dismiss.
- Principles of procedural and substantive fairness.
- Case law: the disciplinary mould – Computicket v. Marcus N.O & Others.
- Additional reading – disciplinary codes and procedureers.
- Evidence vs proof.
- Submission of evidence during a disciplinary hearing.
- Direct and circumstantial evidence.
- General types of evidence.
- Evaluating the evidence.
- Law of evidence – practical application for disciplinary hearings.
- Witnesses in evidence.
- Representing an employee at a disciplinary hearing.
- Working with difficult witnesses.
- Law of evidence principles.
- Identifying and classifying transgressions.
- Investigating before disciplinary action.
- Procedure for misconduct.
- Procedure for poor work performance.
- Procedure for Incapacity.
- Implementation of disciplinary procedures: non-dismissible transgressions.
- Record of disciplinary action 8. Fair dismissal.
- Summary dismissal.
- Practical steps for undertaking investigatory interviews.
- Drafting the charge sheet.
- Issuing the charge sheet.
- Suspension pending the disciplinary hearing.
- Preparing for the hearing.
- Choosing the right chairperson.
- Conduct of the chairperson during the disciplinary hearing.
- Disciplinary hearing procedure: introduction.
- Opening statements.
- Presenting initiator case.
- Presenting employee’s case.
- Closing arguments.
- Findings/results of the hearing.
- Mitigating and aggravating circumstances.
- Decision on sanction and closing of proceedings.
- Failure or refusal to attend the disciplinary hearing.
- Additional reading.
- Non-accredited: Short course only
- Duration: 1h 30m
- Delivery: Classroom/Online/Blended
- Access Period: 12 Months
