Cooling Off Periods and Retraction of Oral Resignations – Guideline Ruling

Large employers often have ‘cooling off’ policies in place which address the common situation of employees orally announcing their resignation in a stressful moment and subsequently having second thoughts. As an Employment Tribunal (ET) ruling showed, however, such polices, once adopted, must be…

Feb 07, 2023

The case concerned a supermarket worker who was under strain at home due to her onerous caring responsibilities for sick and elderly relatives. During an understaffed night shift, she became so stressed that she thought she was having a heart attack. She told a manager that she was resigning and would not be back.

In line with her employer’s policy, she was sent a cooling off letter the following day that gave her seven days in which to change her mind before her resignation would become effective. She and her trade union representative had a number of conversations with managers thereafter but she was eventually informed that her resignation had been processed, bringing her employment to an end.

Ruling on her unfair dismissal claim, the ET found that the employer was entitled to treat her oral resignation as resulting from a rational and conscious decision on her part. The cooling off letter, however, wrongly specified a deadline that afforded her only six, rather than seven, days to retract her resignation.

In upholding her complaint, the ET found that she had a contractual right to change her mind at any time during the seven-day cooling off period. She had done so in a telephone call to her line manager on the final day before the deadline expired. By his words, the manager indicated his understanding that her resignation was being retracted. Her employer was ordered to pay her a basic award of £7,064 and a compensatory award of £6,039.

Landlord of Converted Office Block Pays Price for Breaching Fire Safety Rules

To what extent should landlords who have breached fire safety rules be entitled to recover the costs of remedying such breaches from tenants by way of service charges? The Upper Tribunal (UT) considered that important issue in a case concerning a former office building that had been converted into 96 flats. The building came to the attention of the local fire and rescue service when its fire alarm was disabled by a leak. A fire officer attended and found evidence that fire compartmentation and…

Dismissal for Misconduct Without a Reasonable Investigation is Rarely Fair

Dismissing an employee for misconduct is very unlikely to be viewed as fair if there has been no proper investigation and no consideration of either mitigation or the possibility of a lesser sanction. An Employment Tribunal (ET) made that point in the case of a veteran music teacher who was sacked for refusing to attend a staff meeting. The teacher, who had worked at the relevant school for 24 years, was told by her boss that attendance at the meeting was not optional. When she informed him…

Disability Discrimination and Hypothetical Comparators – Guideline Ruling

Workplace disability discrimination claims often hinge on arguments that a disabled person was treated less favourably than a hypothetical comparator. As a guideline Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision showed, the circumstances that are imputed to such a comparator are, in many cases, of decisive importance. The case concerned a warehouse operative who was disabled by degenerative disc disease in her lower back. She was in near-constant pain and could not bend, walk or sit for more than…