The People Bulletin

An employment tribunal has ruled that DSG Retail Ltd was entitled to dismiss its employee, Ms Esam for gross misconduct as a result of receiving goods that ended up being gifts from a contractor. This was in breach of the company’s ‘inducements, gifts and favours’ policy.

Her role was to send pallets of returned electrical goods beyond economical repair to contractors who then disposed of the scrap goods, and she had full control of which contractor received particular pallets of goods.

One contractor, a Mr Hill, approached Ms Esam to sell his goods (which included a laptop and printer) on his behalf on eBay, but the actual auction never took place despite the goods having been received by her. In her defence, she claimed she had changed her mind about acting for him.  However, the goods were not returned to Mr Hill for five months – long enough for the tribunal to decide that they had, in fact become gifts.

Further details of this case, along with a full transcript of the tribunal judgment is available from the online HR intelligence service, XpertHR.[1]  Although employment tribunal judgments are available to the public, they are not openly accessible online and applications have to be made to the Employment Tribunals Service for a copy for which a fee is usually chargeable.[2]

The XpertHR summary makes the point that: “a key issue for the tribunal was whether or not Ms Esam knew that what she was doing was a breach of her employer’s rules. Although the inducements, gifts and favours policy was not incorporated into her contract of employment, Ms Esam conceded throughout that she had been aware that it was wrong for her to accept gifts and inducements.”

In Fiona Bolton’s article ‘Bribery and corruption’[3], she reminds employers that the Bribery Act will be implemented in April 2011 and too many organisations are unaware that failing to prevent bribery will be a criminal offence.  Once the legislation is in force, organisations such as DSG Retail would have been subject to prosecution for breaking the law if they had not acted as they did in investigating and dismissing an employee like Ms Esam whose actions would have been clearly caught by the new rules.

Esam v DSG Retail Ltd ET/2605279/09

[1] www.xperthr.co.uk/article/105882/in-the-employment-tribunals--november-2010.aspx

[2] www.employmenttribunals.gov.uk/

[3] www.apbusinesscontacts.com/the_people_bulletin-pb_2/bribery.aspx