Advice Required - Resignation/Reference

[wndsr]

Afternoon

I was hoping to get some advice from people on here regarding an issue I have been having at work for a number of weeks, which has ultimately led to me being without a job. Forgive the length of the post, I just wanted to try and cover the main points.

On 9th September I was invited to a meeting with my line manager and his manager to discuss 'fraudulent hotel bookings' and also posting 'inappropriate comments on Twitter'. They alleged that I had booked corporate rate hotels without approval and as a result I was suspended for alleged Fraud. No mention of the 'inappropriate tweets' was mentioned in my suspension letter.

So two weeks go by and I am invited to an 'investigation meeting' on 19th September where we go through the hotel bookings line by line. I explain none of them were booked fraudulently as I was on work business at the time of the booking. What I did fail to do however, was follow the internal policy with regards to booking them. I must point out that at no point had I been briefed on the correct policy and method of approval and we established in that meeting that travel recently undertaken with my line manager was also booked incorrectly according to policy.

In the meeting I apologised profusely for my mistakes and continued to argue the use of the word Fraud is unnecessary as it's a simple case of not being aware of policy. I offered to reimburse the company immediately if that is what they were seeking. At the end of this meeting I was not given the opportunity to read and sign the notes they made which according to the disciplinary policy they gave me, I should have been able to do.

I was then verbally asked if I was able to attend a disciplinary hearing on 2nd October, to which I explained I would only be able to attend if my nominated representative was able too also.

I continued to call the office daily, as required to do so under the terms of my suspension. I explained to my manager that my nominated representative was unavailable on the date chosen so he advised they would be looking to book an alternative hearing week commencing 7th October. At no point was I given a formal written invitation to any meeting, it was simply an informal verbal discussion about my availability.

After taking advice from the Union and colleagues who had experience in this field, I felt like the result of the disciplinary hearing would be dismissal. Also given the reluctance of the company to stop classing it as 'Fraud' I felt like I didn't have a leg to stand on.

As a result, on 25th September I rang my manager on the phone to advise him of my intention to resign on the basis that my resignation serves as immediate closure to all allegations against me and the company agrees to provide me with a positive reference. I also offered to reimburse the company if required. He agreed to go away and liaise with HR and get back to me with some answers.

I continued to phone in at 9:30 every day as per the terms of my suspension. It was only four days after when he advised me there was no need to keep calling in. At the time I thought nothing of it and agreed.

Last week I received a letter from the company stating that they had accepted my immediate resignation on 25th September and that any reference will say I resigned pending a disciplinary hearing. I stress again, I did not offer my immediate resignation on that date, I simply shared my intention to resign on the basis that we come to an agreement. If I had resigned and they accepted on the 25th as they claim, why would I still continue to 'check in' each day and why would they continue to speak to me?

All in all this a huge headache for me. As if the prospect of having no income is bad enough, having the extra headache of a poor reference from my previous employer makes things even harder. As you can imagine it's been a crap four weeks and I've been really quite down about it all. I have already spoke to an employment lawyer who reckons I would have a good chance if he was to take the case on.

Would be interested to hear from other forum members who may have had a similar experience or know about this type of stuff.

Thanks in advance.

 

[wndsr]

It's a very large bank... About 130,000 employees. I joined the Union at the start of this drama and as a result they were only able to offer limited to advice. A contact of mine is a Union rep and advised me off the record.

 

[wndsr]

IMHO, your offer to refund the money out of your own pocket is an admission of guilt, not following the policy aside, i wouldn't have been offering to refund anything!

I wouldn't have resigned, i would have waited to be sacked, then taken my case up via a tribuneral, provided you can prove you hadn't been given training in the correct procedure.

I see your point. I guess I just wanted all this to go away and was prepared to do anything to ideally keep my job, or alternatively find a new job with a good reference.

 

[wndsr]

I would say no, they would say they can't. They are claiming I tendered my immediate resignation over the phone which my manager accepted there and then.

What actually happened was I told him I would be resigning IF we came to an agreement regarding the reference. I continued to call in daily as if I were still suspended and he continued to speak to me, so no idea how they can claim he accepted my resignation?

 

[wndsr]

You say it's a bank, are all your calls recorded?

Would you be able to request a copy of the call recording for when you phoned about your resignation and also when they told you not to phone any more.

Calls are recorded yes, I didn't think of this. I will ask about this.

Everything else aside as soon as someone resigns when they've got a disciplinary in progress that just screams of guilt.
If you've done nothing wrong then don't back down.

I see your point entirely and maybe in hindsight I only saw two options. (a) Come to an agreement with them with regards to exchanging my resignation in return for closure and a reference (b) facing the disciplinary and probably face the sack.

Maybe I should have done more research before getting here, but that's hindsight I guess.

 

[wndsr]

You've left it a bit long in between reacting to things, really, but if you want to continue this then you need to immediately do the following:

1. Call them and advise that you did NOT tender resignation verbally on the phone, but queried the possibility of doing so in exchange for a positive reference going forward. They have not offered this, so you are not offering your resignation.

2. If they dispute the above, request a recording of the call. Stress the fact that, if they state they have no recording so cannot provide you with one, they also cannot prove that you resigned and you will therefore be compelled to begin legal proceedings with a view to prosecuting them for constructive dismissal.

3. Once (if) reinstated, get back in to complete your disciplinary hearing(s), and during this time query, on record and with a witness, whether your line manager is also undergoing similar proceedings and accusation of fraud for the mis-booking made when you were travelling together. If not, why not. This must all be recorded in notes/minutes and provided to you at the end of the hearing.

Your actions so far have been screaming admission of guilt, which isn't good for you, however they aren't exactly playing by the book either.

What exactly has gone on here? Don't you have back office workers who book your travel and hotels for you? Have you been personally booking hotels under the company name/corporate rate when not travelling for a legitimate business reason?

Thanks for the response and appreciate it how it looks. As I said, this whole situation is new to me and I thought resigning would be doing the right thing.

I contacted them yesterday after an employment lawyer drafted an email for me to send. They today replied and said they have not changed their position.

I have booked the hotels for work related travel - they have not been just 'jollies at the weekend' or anything like that. At no point did I have any intention of gaining anything - if anything I was on business with the company that would have meant it was impossible for me to get home.

Being disciplined for not following policy you have not been trained or signed off on is a good example of the above. Especially being accused of fraud with it as that then implies the involvement of law enforcement agencies as I believe there is a duty to inform.

Unless of course the policy relating to hotel bookings was in the staff handbook or on an email somewhere that you signed off as having understood?

Really, if all the above is true and there are no salient facts missing, this an outrageous abuse of authority/procedures.

Talking to ACAS might be useful as would an employment lawyer as mentioned above.

Do not take this lying down if you have done nothing wrong!

I do not recall ever being given a travel policy or have my manager take time to discuss it with me. My role involved a lot of travel so would have expected them to have took the time to share this with me.

 

[wndsr]

Can you give an example?

I'm finding it difficult to grasp why, if your role involved a lot of travel, this wasn't taken care of for you (in terms of hotel bookings, flights etc.) by secretarial staff.

Were you left stranded by work in a foreign country with no return flight booked, and were thus forced to walk into a hotel and book a stay? Do you have a policy in place for situations like that were you pay and claim reimbursement? It's a little hard to work out why any situation(s) involving legitimate business needs could lead to something of these proportions.

I could see a situation, for example, where you were on the other side of the country with a group of co-workers for the day, and they decided to hit the town on Friday night. You decided to join them, and being too far away from home would require a hotel. So you book one. On the company. This would be a mistake as it hasn't been approved, otherwise one would have already been arranged. However, in that situation I would also expect return travel to have been arranged prior by the company for the end of your trip. So, in this situation you would have had to had abandoned your arranged return travel in order to claim a hotel stay to go out on the lash... all on the excuse that if it weren't for the company, you wouldn't have been there.

I hope I'm a million miles away from the truth.

One example was how I was invited to attend a dinner event in London to pick up an award at the Grosvenor Hotel. Getting back to Manchester that evening would have been impossible given the distance so I booked a local hotel at the corporate rate.

With regards to the budget it was coming out of, there was meant to be a 'Budget Committee' that had to agree on spend prior to committing but this was never strictly implemented despite it being a requirement of an Executive.

The four people on the Committee, of which I was one would meet and review budget requests and decide collaboratively. As one person in particular - the person who I believe has instigated this whole issue - would routinely self-approve thousands of pounds worth of spend. Whether it be drinks, corporate sponsorship or travel, this person would routinely approve on her own without consulting other members of the committee.

It was on this basis that I believed that (a) as I had never had sight of the travel policy, I didn't know that there was a procedure to follow (b) as we both had an equal position on the budget committee and she was self-approving amounts well into their thousands, I was unaware that my actions were wrong.

Hope I've been able to explain this.

 

[wndsr]

@holymonk - Have already started discussions with a lawyer in London who a number of friends have recommended. He seems spot on, but I guess they all do when they want some notes.

He is going to write to the company now and see if he can nudge them into changing their mind.

 

[wndsr]

Just picked up todays post and have a letter from the company stating they will debit £1400 from my bank account before the 18th October.

Fabulous.

 

[wndsr]

Sounds like it's full-on lawyer time, I'm afraid. Stick with the guy you've been introduced to so far.

At least you have a further claim for hardship and financial loss from them now.

Well exactly. I've just emptied my accounts and moved everything to my alternative account. If they chase me for funds I'll simply state I'll be taking legal action.

Do they have "in writing" your permission to remove funds from your account?

Also, good luck, seems quite a pickle you're in

Unless there is something in my contract that I signed at the start of employment, then no. It is usual practice to ask employees to sign a debit authority form when leaving the Bank but as I have not been in to work since my investigation meeting this was not possible.

A Union friend of mine has advised me that unless I have signed that form, I am a customer like any other and they can't just debit my account. Although that said there is probably something in my normal account T&C that gives the bank permission.

Bit torn on this one. Perhaps I am misunderstanding but, reading through the London awards scenario, you seem to be stating that you were fully aware of the existence of a committee (of which you were a member) holding responsibility for approving the expenditure you incurred yet chose to ignore this on the basis that someone else had done likewise. If that is correct, it would be fairly difficult to argue that you had not knowingly acted contrary to company (Coop, perhaps) policy.

That said, if you can honestly prove that each item of expenditure was incurred for exclusively business purposes then it would be deeply misguided of your employer to continue to make accusations of fraud - indeed, it is potentially defamatory. Hopefully your solicitor will do a little more than nudge.

Apologies for the confusion here - the London scenario was from January (I have questioned why it's now suddenly been raised as an issue considering somebody would have had to review cost centre reports monthly and especially quarterly so it definitely would have been seen) - this was before the creation of the budget committee in April.

 

[wndsr]

I'm no lawyer, but I'd expect them to run into difficulty punishing him for not following a company policy that nobody in the company follows. Certainly if he is singled out for not following it.

Exactly, and I can evidence times when there the policy has not been followed on various occasions. I wonder if the 'extent' of the breach has an impact? There are times when minor breaches have took place then others when an approval system have been missed out entirely.

This.

Also, a lesson to everyone about why they should be in their union from the start. Unions are amazing for workers. I imagine he would have been completely let off had he been in the union. HR do not work for the employee, they are there to make sure the company does not get in trouble and are equally as out to get you as any vampire capitalist.

Second this entirely. I've never had to deal with a Union before but my 'off the record' chats with them have been fantastic.

 

[wndsr]

Thanks to everybody for the responses to this, much appreciated. Just wanted to provide an update as it is still ongoing and is still a major headache for me.

I now have the help of an employment lawyer who has been fantastic and has drafted a number of emails for me to send to my previous employer before he goes in and writes a formal letter from himself on my behalf.

Notably, I have reiterated to them that I did not resign either in writing or verbally and instead I only had a discussion with my manager about agreeing a mutually agreed way to end the process. They interpreted this as "Josh has resigned" despite me, at no point mentioning I resign with immediate affect. My follow up email clearly stated that any resignation would be strictly on the basis that they agree to provide a positive reference for me.

My lawyer has rang the company saying he is acting on my behalf and therefore requesting a copy of their investigation file - they refused. I too sent a request for a copy of all information they hold regarding me relating to their investigation relating to their allegations but I was informed that I am no longer entitled to see this information as I am not an employee.

I haven't had time to chat with my lawyer yet, but am I correct in thinking that they must provide me with this information, if I make it clear I am exercising my rights under the Data Protection Act? I find it strange that they are able to say "resigned pending a disciplinary" in my reference but they refuse to release any information relating to these allegations.

Cheers

 

[wndsr]

Why did you offer to resign?

You could have pushed for constructive dismissal if you'd argued your case a bit harder

This is true, but at the time I wasn't thinking that. The whole situation was so daunting and I made a panic decision.

Update: They have completed ignored my solicitors Letter Before Action so as a result I filed an employment tribunal claim on Friday that set out my case and how they have refused to engage with me in any way at all.

They have chosen to not just be difficult, but to simply ignore me and hope I will go away. I've got all the evidence showing that any resignation was strictly on the basis that they provide an agreed reference.

It's a matter for their legal team to sort out now. I expect a very long and costly journey.