Dismissal of manager with no prior warning was unfair

Case 3: The law

Mr Kefil worked for 14 years for a large distributor in the food industry. His last role was stock control manager.

There had been no formal complaints about his conduct as a manager, although he had received one informal warning about his management style.

Nine months after that informal warning, the company was sent a letter of complaint, written by three employees and signed by another 10. The complaint mainly concerned the conduct of another member of staff, but it also made accusations about Kefil. It said he had an authoritarian management style, often telling those who worked for him that they would be sacked if they did not do what he told them.

After a disciplinary hearing he was dismissed. He brought a successful claim for unfair dismissal, but the employer appealed.

The ruling

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) agreed with the tribunal. The failure to give Kefil a formal warning, which could have been written or oral, explaining that this kind of behaviour could lead to dismissal. This coupled with his employer’s failure to offer training to help him correct his management style, made this dismissal beyond the band of reasonable responses of an employer and unfair.

JJ Food Services Limited v Kefil UKEAT/0320/12/SM