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A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. You might even be able to have something generic

A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. You might even be able to have something generic like "verbal abuse" but then you have to be careful that it might be turned on the bosses and cause another type of lawsuit.

WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
“So, my corpus-cavernosum-for-brain boss…”
jrockway 1y ago
From the article: > However, this required she be given a prior warning. Only more serious breaches such as “threatening and intimidating language” would be gross misconduct and warrant summary dismissal. It seems like the prior warning is the necessary part. The company obviously wants to write the rules such that the upper management team can make a one-off stupid comment to an employee without the employee suing to get them fired. Unfortunately, this means the upper management team can't rage-fire someone with no thought. (No doubt to show how in charge and powerful they are, which kind of proves the person using the term "dickhead" right.)
Aurornis 1y ago
HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. That’s why I don’t see these rulings as a win for the common employee. The situation now encourages companies to be as broad as possible with their contracts and policies and include so many just-in-case provisions that it starts to get hard for anyone to know and follow all of them.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  They'd best be prepared to enforce it evenly, then, or the next suit is "my boss called me a dickhead 43 times without any consequences, and that's discriminatory".
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    Which is another loss for the common employee, because now if you mistakenly violate one of those voluminous company policies or you're having a bad day and make a small lapse of judgment, they're going to feel obligated to punish you for it to avoid more legal infractions.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Or, as said rules also apply to the boss, they might feel obligated to be a bit more reasonable. In this case, all they had to do was issue a warning - as they promosed to do in the contract - instead of a summary firing for the first offense. If the behavior reoccurred they'd have been clear.
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      This is a terribly bad faith argument. We're literally reading an example of someone being protected by laws and your response is "well this is actually bad for them"?
- Twirrim 1y ago
  Based on conversations with a relative in HR in the UK, usually the company procedures are detailed and cover everything. You just have to follow the procedure. Most of the pain they ever had to deal with has come down to managers etc. acting off the cuff, not following the documented process.
- scott_w 1y ago
  > HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. No, they aren't because that's not how contracts or the law work in the UK. The court found that the contract enumerated a long list of breaches of contract, of which "swearing at colleagues" was not in that list. This means the court read the list as exhaustive, because it appeared to be exhaustive. If the contract was worded differently, the court may not have used this interpretive rule. If the wording was a little more broad, the court may have worked to determine whether "swearing at your boss" could reasonably fit into the terms.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > No, they aren't because that's not how contracts or the law work in the UK. The court found that the contract enumerated a long list of breaches of contract, of which "swearing at colleagues" was not in that list. This means the court read the list as exhaustive, because it appeared to be exhaustive. Yes, and that's why I said HR and Legal are updating their boilerplate to be more exhaustive.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      UK companies are not going to be able to out engineer UK labor protections to arrive at the US' at will experience. Such is the point of labor laws and protections. They can update the procedures, they'll still end up in court or tribunals. This is not the US (thankfully).
      - Aurornis 1y ago
        Obviously contracts can't override labor laws I'm saying they're going to update the contracts to match the labor laws. If the labor laws say you have to have fireable offenses explicitly enumerated, contracts will now have a lot of fireable offenses explicitly enumerated. That's not evading the law, that's literally how you comply with the law.
        1y ago
- tempfile 1y ago
  Doesn't every win for the common employee encourage companies to be as broad as possible? What would count as a "real win" by your standard?
- tialaramex 1y ago
  > HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. If you want to fire someone you follow procedure. In this case they didn't follow procedure. This is exactly the sort of situation HR already despairs over. Writing new HR documents can't fix this, the same way that bolding the text "Do not press this button" in the instruction manual will not stop customers who don't read the manual and then press the button from doing so. This also just obviously isn't gross misconduct. So now your rewritten procedures might get you sued which (checks notes) is the opposite of what you wanted.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  > broad as possible with their contracts have you read any of your company's policys recently? at one company I could be technically fired for wearing a tracksuit to work. at a FAANG, one that was very famous for upholding "freedom of expression", could fire me for questioning _in private_ the direction of anyone more senior than me. Even if those policies are broad and all encompassing, you still need to demonstrate that they were applied correctly, proportionally and reasonably. You also need to prove that the _policy_ is reasonable as well. for example you _could_ have a policy where you cannot say anything negative. Good luck trying to prove that its legally reasonable (and that it was applied evenly)
isodev 1y ago
Is calling a colleague dickhead really “verbal abuse”, though? I think trying to fire someone based on that rather than addressing whatever conflict or friction lead to the “name calling” is an example of bad management.
- toast0 1y ago
  No, dickhead is a noun; nounal abuse is tolerated. Telling someone to fuck off could be verbal abuse, as fuck is a verb. But in this case it was not the purely figurative suggestion to fuck off was the britishism meaning to please leave with haste.
  - gowld 1y ago
    "is" is an intransitive linking verb. Saying "You're a dickhead" is verbal abuse. Saying "Dickhead" alone is nounal abuse.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
crote 1y ago
> You might even be able to have something generic like "verbal abuse" That's just going to lead to a lawsuit on the definition of "verbal abuse". > A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. Even specifically stating that might not work. It is not uncommon for such clauses to be struck through in court if they are deemed unfair and disproportionally punitive to the employee. For a regular office drone otherwise in good standing, given the UK's cultural context, getting fired for calling your boss a "dickhead" is an extremely harsh punishment. An official warning, improvement plan, or some kind of training would be more appropriate.
KaiserPro 1y ago
> A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. Nope, needs to be reasonable. If you're doing something unusual, then it needs to be telegraphed and backed up so that if you are taken to court you can give evidence as to why that clause was needed. > have something generic like "verbal abuse" you would need to have a policy that defines what verbal abuse is, and a way to record and catagorise it. its also a hard task to prove that one instance of verbal abuse where using "dickhead" as a term of endearment without any other connotations (sexual or otherwise) is gross misconduct, especially as the reply was "you can fuck off"

WesolyKubeczek 1y ago

“So, my corpus-cavernosum-for-brain boss…”

jrockway 1y ago

From the article: > However, this required she be given a prior warning. Only more serious breaches such as “threatening and intimidating language” would be gross misconduct and warrant summary dismissal. It seems like the prior warning is the necessary part. The company obviously wants to write the rules such that the upper management team can make a one-off stupid comment to an employee without the employee suing to get them fired. Unfortunately, this means the upper management team can't rage-fire someone with no thought. (No doubt to show how in charge and powerful they are, which kind of proves the person using the term "dickhead" right.)

Aurornis 1y ago

HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. That’s why I don’t see these rulings as a win for the common employee. The situation now encourages companies to be as broad as possible with their contracts and policies and include so many just-in-case provisions that it starts to get hard for anyone to know and follow all of them.

ceejayoz 1y ago
They'd best be prepared to enforce it evenly, then, or the next suit is "my boss called me a dickhead 43 times without any consequences, and that's discriminatory".
- Aurornis 1y ago
  Which is another loss for the common employee, because now if you mistakenly violate one of those voluminous company policies or you're having a bad day and make a small lapse of judgment, they're going to feel obligated to punish you for it to avoid more legal infractions.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Or, as said rules also apply to the boss, they might feel obligated to be a bit more reasonable. In this case, all they had to do was issue a warning - as they promosed to do in the contract - instead of a summary firing for the first offense. If the behavior reoccurred they'd have been clear.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    This is a terribly bad faith argument. We're literally reading an example of someone being protected by laws and your response is "well this is actually bad for them"?
Twirrim 1y ago
Based on conversations with a relative in HR in the UK, usually the company procedures are detailed and cover everything. You just have to follow the procedure. Most of the pain they ever had to deal with has come down to managers etc. acting off the cuff, not following the documented process.
scott_w 1y ago
> HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. No, they aren't because that's not how contracts or the law work in the UK. The court found that the contract enumerated a long list of breaches of contract, of which "swearing at colleagues" was not in that list. This means the court read the list as exhaustive, because it appeared to be exhaustive. If the contract was worded differently, the court may not have used this interpretive rule. If the wording was a little more broad, the court may have worked to determine whether "swearing at your boss" could reasonably fit into the terms.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > No, they aren't because that's not how contracts or the law work in the UK. The court found that the contract enumerated a long list of breaches of contract, of which "swearing at colleagues" was not in that list. This means the court read the list as exhaustive, because it appeared to be exhaustive. Yes, and that's why I said HR and Legal are updating their boilerplate to be more exhaustive.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    UK companies are not going to be able to out engineer UK labor protections to arrive at the US' at will experience. Such is the point of labor laws and protections. They can update the procedures, they'll still end up in court or tribunals. This is not the US (thankfully).
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      Obviously contracts can't override labor laws I'm saying they're going to update the contracts to match the labor laws. If the labor laws say you have to have fireable offenses explicitly enumerated, contracts will now have a lot of fireable offenses explicitly enumerated. That's not evading the law, that's literally how you comply with the law.
      - 1y ago
tempfile 1y ago
Doesn't every win for the common employee encourage companies to be as broad as possible? What would count as a "real win" by your standard?
tialaramex 1y ago
> HR and legal across the UK are probably updating their company procedures right now to include every imaginable reason they might want to fire someone. If you want to fire someone you follow procedure. In this case they didn't follow procedure. This is exactly the sort of situation HR already despairs over. Writing new HR documents can't fix this, the same way that bolding the text "Do not press this button" in the instruction manual will not stop customers who don't read the manual and then press the button from doing so. This also just obviously isn't gross misconduct. So now your rewritten procedures might get you sued which (checks notes) is the opposite of what you wanted.
KaiserPro 1y ago
> broad as possible with their contracts have you read any of your company's policys recently? at one company I could be technically fired for wearing a tracksuit to work. at a FAANG, one that was very famous for upholding "freedom of expression", could fire me for questioning _in private_ the direction of anyone more senior than me. Even if those policies are broad and all encompassing, you still need to demonstrate that they were applied correctly, proportionally and reasonably. You also need to prove that the _policy_ is reasonable as well. for example you _could_ have a policy where you cannot say anything negative. Good luck trying to prove that its legally reasonable (and that it was applied evenly)

isodev 1y ago

Is calling a colleague dickhead really “verbal abuse”, though? I think trying to fire someone based on that rather than addressing whatever conflict or friction lead to the “name calling” is an example of bad management.

toast0 1y ago
No, dickhead is a noun; nounal abuse is tolerated. Telling someone to fuck off could be verbal abuse, as fuck is a verb. But in this case it was not the purely figurative suggestion to fuck off was the britishism meaning to please leave with haste.
- gowld 1y ago
  "is" is an intransitive linking verb. Saying "You're a dickhead" is verbal abuse. Saying "Dickhead" alone is nounal abuse.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

crote 1y ago

> You might even be able to have something generic like "verbal abuse" That's just going to lead to a lawsuit on the definition of "verbal abuse". > A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. Even specifically stating that might not work. It is not uncommon for such clauses to be struck through in court if they are deemed unfair and disproportionally punitive to the employee. For a regular office drone otherwise in good standing, given the UK's cultural context, getting fired for calling your boss a "dickhead" is an extremely harsh punishment. An official warning, improvement plan, or some kind of training would be more appropriate.

KaiserPro 1y ago

> A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed. Nope, needs to be reasonable. If you're doing something unusual, then it needs to be telegraphed and backed up so that if you are taken to court you can give evidence as to why that clause was needed. > have something generic like "verbal abuse" you would need to have a policy that defines what verbal abuse is, and a way to record and catagorise it. its also a hard task to prove that one instance of verbal abuse where using "dickhead" as a term of endearment without any other connotations (sexual or otherwise) is gross misconduct, especially as the reply was "you can fuck off"