Whistleblowing and Employers Knowledge

Whistleblowing and Employers Knowledge

A dismissing manager does not need to know that an employee has made a protected disclosure for the dismissal to be automatically unfair, where the dismissing manager was mislead by senior staff about the real reason.

The employee in this case raised breaches in regulations and because of this was treated badly by her superiors.  The superiors lied about the employee during the employees grievance and hid the extent of the whistleblowing.

The Appeal Tribunal ruled that this was automatically unfair, even though the manager hearing the case did not know of the whistleblowing. This is because he was mislead by others in the company who did know.

This case underlines the importance of having a clear Whistleblowing Policy with clear guidelines as to how complaints will be dealt with.

The full case can be read at :

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2016/0020_16_1905.html

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