Letter confirming no further steps after suspension and investigation

What is a letter confirming no further steps after suspension and investigation and when should you use it?

This letter follows on from your decision to suspend an employee while you investigate allegations of serious or gross misconduct.

It confirms that following the employee’s suspension and your subsequent investigation, in accordance with your disciplinary policy, you have decided to take no further action and the disciplinary process is now concluded.

The letter is drafted to include a clear record of your decision making in the matter and provides for a summary of your conclusions and the reasons leading to them.

What else should you consider?

Your employment contract with the employee and your disciplinary policy within your employee handbook should make very clear what behaviour or activity constitutes gross misconduct and therefore justified you taking the earlier steps to suspend the employee while you investigate the allegations levelled at him/her.

Make sure that whenever you’re faced with allegations of misconduct, you follow the process set out in your disciplinary policy.

If you need to investigate a serious or gross misconduct allegation against an employee, it may be better for the workforce, the employee in question, and the business as a whole, if the accused employee is away from the business during the process.

In cases such as this (and only if you’ve exhausted all other options such as placing the employee in a different department, for example), you can consider suspending the employee so that you can investigate properly.

However, you need to ensure that the employment contract and/or your disciplinary policy allows for suspension pending an investigation.

Otherwise, you made find yourself taking actions that fall outside your allowed procedure.

Our guides to suspending employees (coming soon) and to handling a disciplinary issue can also help you to assess the seriousness of an employee’s behaviour and your rights in response to it.

You may also find our guide to carrying out investigations useful.