Dismissal unfair when employer failed to properly consider various allegations of fraud

In Chand v EE Limited the employee had a clean 16-year record. After 4 separate incidents during customer interactions over several months in 2022, the employer dismissed her over policy breaches and allegations of fraud.

The Employment Tribunal found that the dismissing manager didn't distinguish between a customer acting fraudulently and the employee doing so, so he had no reasonable grounds for upholding any of the four fraud allegations. Nevertheless, the ET decided that the dismissal was fair, on the basis that the ET found that the policy breaches by the employee were clear.

This was overturned on appeal, the ET had found that there were no reasonable grounds to have upheld the fraud allegations against the employee, and the focus had to be on what the dismissing manager actually believed the employee had done, and not what the manager might have concluded that the employee had done. Without a clear basis to hold the employee had committed fraud, the dismissal was unfair.

The key take away from this is that managers deciding on dismissals have to show clearly what they actually believed at the time of dismissal and that they held that belief on reasonable grounds, a muddled manager hadn't appreciated the distinction between not following procedures (misconduct) and fraud (gross misconduct).

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