1. The law and disciplinary and grievance procedures

If an employer fails to follow a disciplinary or grievance procedure (unless the procedure is contractual), there is no clear legal recourse for the employee. But that does not mean that non-contractual procedures are irrelevant to legal proceedings because the employer’s (and employee’s) conduct, and the Codes of Practice produced by conciliation services Acas and the Labour Relations Agency (LRA) (see below), will be taken into account by tribunals in any relevant claim. In many cases, it is the failure to follow fair procedures that makes a dismissal unfair.

Proceedings should follow the principles of natural justice, which are that workers should have the opportunity to freely state their case and that the decision maker must be impartial. If an employer takes action against an employee without informing them of the charges and giving them the opportunity to rebut them, this would be a breach of natural justice and it will be highly relevant to the question of whether or not the employer has acted reasonably.