The next step

Employee absence record

[Form]

The Acas Code of Practice

[Weblink]

The tribunal's ruling

[Weblink]

Acas must pay £25,000 for constructive dismissal

Helping with queries

Ms Tracey (T) began working as a helpline advisor for Acas in 2013. Although she was initially hired on a one-year fixed-term contract, it was later agreed that her employment would continue.

T was subsequently sent a proposed new employment contract but never signed it because Acas hadn’t answered her queries about hours of work, holiday entitlement and pay. Acas never chased for the contract’s return.

Problems emerge

In early 2018 it was discovered that no leave or absence records could be found in respect of T. Acas attempted to manually reconstruct these records going back to 2013, but this exercise proved difficult without an agreed written contract and other supporting records.

This problem was further compounded when a new piece of software was rolled out to assist with payroll and holiday entitlement calculations. The staff who used that software did not know how to properly record these values.

Error spotted

In January 2022 a new employee spotted that inadequate records were being kept. A query was raised as to how much holiday T was entitled to but it was never resolved.

At multiple points during T’s employment, Acas also wrongly suggested that she had been overpaid and sought to recover those supposed overpayments. However, when T challenged this things would always go quiet.

Constructive dismissal

After the new employee flagged up the inadequate records in January 2022, T attempted to resign having become fed up with the situation and uncertainty. She only agreed not to do so after her line manager assured her that the issue would be resolved that same month.

This never happened and five months later, when Acas ignored her grievance, T resigned. She then successfully claimed constructive dismissal at the tribunal and has now been awarded nearly £25,000 in compensation (see The next step ).

Resolving the issues

The tribunal noted that Acas had repeatedly failed to adequately investigate the matter and resolve the holiday entitlement issue - these events meant that T was entitled to claim constructive dismissal . Acas had also completely ignored her grievance - an unusual decision for the organisation that wrote the Code on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures (see The next step )!

Acas could have avoided this constructive dismissal claim entirely by resolving T’s queries on her new employment contract, having a signed employment contract on file and maintaining proper leave records throughout employment.

Tip. The latter needn’t be difficult and can be done easily and accurately using our employee absence record form (see The next step ).

For the tribunal’s ruling in this case, the Acas Code of Practice and an employee absence record form, visit https://tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 25, issue 10.