Acting for Pure Asphalt Company Ltd

The client, one of the leading mastic asphalt manufactures in the UK, contacted us in relation to a disgruntled senior manager who, through his solicitor, raised a meritless grievance accompanied by an invitation for the client to pay him to leave his employment.  In addition to this, he went off sick with stress.

Given the odd nature of both the grievance, which was clearly flawed even if read as generously as possible in the employee’s favour, and the request for payment to leave, we advised our client to search the employee’s work computer and email for evidence of any wrongdoing.

This revealed the individual to have been leaking commercially sensitive information to third parties and passing potential business to another company.  Also uncovered was evidence of the sales manager’s intention to use the company’s grievance procedure in bad faith to waste the time of senior management resources.

We advised our client on how to proceed following these revelations, including communicating with the employee’s solicitor and conducting an investigation and disciplinary process, alongside protecting the business from further damage from the manager’s actions.

Resulting from these moves the client was in a strong position to reject the employee’s payment demands and to dictate the basis on which the employee’s employment would come to an end, which would be on terms agreeable to the company.