Letter dismissing an employee for gross misconduct following a disciplinary hearing

What is a letter dismissing an employee for gross misconduct and when should you use it?

This letter forms part of our suite of materials to support you where you have invoked your disciplinary policy and its process because of inappropriate conduct by one of your employees.

It’s called the confirmation of summary dismissal because it’s the final step in the disciplinary process, assuming that the employee does not appeal your decision to dismiss them.

‘Summary dismissal’ describes when an employer dismisses an employee without notice, or pay, because the employee has committed gross misconduct.

Summary dismissal is only considered fair if:

1. it’s based on employer rights that are clearly evident in the employment contract, and
2. the employer follows their disciplinary procedure in the same way that they would in any other situation.

Summary dismissal decisions can be controversial and employees who face them may feel resentful, embarrassed, unfairly treated and angry, which can make discussions between you and them quite challenging.

Normally, you would have had a meeting with the employee to explain your concerns about their conduct – this is the ‘disciplinary hearing’ referred to in the first paragraph of our template.

It’s important to ensure that the employee was told in advance that the earlier meeting was a disciplinary meeting and about the range of potential consequences/sanctions that might be applied following the discussions at that disciplinary meeting.

What else might you need?

If you’ve not considered the earlier letters in this template suite, such as the first written warning to employee about misconduct and the invitation to employee to attend a disciplinary meeting about their gross misconduct, you should consider whether it would be more appropriate to complete these first.

For more background on this approach, see our step by step guide to handling disciplinary issues.

You should also make sure you’re following your own disciplinary policy in handling this situation.