Disciplinary

A. Your employer has no legal obligation to provide a reference for you. If they do, it must be true, accurate, fair and not misleading, but there is no rule that it must be full and comprehensive.

If a reference is not accurate, your employer risks a claim in negligence by any new employer who relies on it to give you a job.

It is sometimes possible to negotiate a reference text, ending the employment on agreed terms, usually after signing a Settlement Agreement in which you agree not to bring a claim in the employment tribunal.

Employers must never be asked to lie in a reference. However they can be asked to provide a short neutral reference limited to job title, start and end date, and they can promise that no verbal reference will be provided.

Just because you decide to resign before any disciplinary findings have been made against you, this does not mean that the issues being investigated will not be mentioned in the reference (or any follow up conversation about the reference).

Indeed, your employer can refer to those issues, provided they make it clear that the investigation wasn’t completed and that no disciplinary sanction was issued.