Hotel food manager fired over clocking-in irregularities awarded €28k for unfair dismissal
A hotel firm sacked a food manager over getting colleagues to falsify her morning clock-in at the hotel’s pin-number and facial recognition operated clock-in system.
However, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has found that the woman was unfairly dismissed and has ordered her former employer to pay her €28,400.
WRC Adjudication Officer, Penelope McGrath, found that the decision by the hotel to sack the manager “was ill-judged and unfair”.
The hotel manager said that she got her colleagues to "clock" her in for the 7.30am start due to her difficulty in making the start time as she had a small child at home.
The Human Resources (HR) manager for the hotel firm told Ms McGrath said that the manager would stay a little longer after her shift to make up for the lost time and very often a lot longer than was contractually her obligation.
The manager said that the previous owner of the hotel knew about her difficulty in getting to work on time and sanctioned what Ms McGrath described as “her rather unorthodox practice” of having others ring in her clock time if she was running late.
The former owner sold the business to a new entity and the food manager was called to a meeting by the new CEO in July 2017 where he said that "clocking irregularities" had come to light and suspended her pending an investigation.
The hotel firm stated that a six week period analysed showed that the food manager had been late up to 50% of mornings where the manager was having her presence being recorded at 7.30am by colleagues who pinned in her number and then invariably pressed a finger over the camera mechanism so no facial picture came up.
The woman explained to her bosses that the practice was part of a three-year standing arrangement with the previous hotel owner. She said that she was never corrected on the practice as she was seen as a valuable asset in the workplace.
The food manager told the WRC that the entire disciplinary process was conducted, orchestrated and designed to remove her from the workplace.
The manager claimed that within the workplace that she was seen as being a remnant of the days of the former owner and the opportunity to terminate her employment was entirely too tempting for the new operator not to take it.
The manager said that the new owner was dissatisfied over the high salary that she was on and that there was resentment that she had a free company parking spot in the city centre.
In response, the hotel firm stated that the way the manager required colleagues and subordinates to indicate her presence in the workplace when she was not present "amounted to a deliberate and calculated falsification of company records which amounted to a gross misconduct".
In her findings, Ms McGrath stated that the food manager presented the hotel firm with a reasonable explanation over the clock-in which they did not attempt to confirm or validate.
Ms McGrath said that it has been established that the manager was a generally good employee who worked well beyond her contracted hours.
Ms McGrath said the new hotel owner was entitled to ask the manager’s clocking in system cease “but I do not accept that this behaviour, taking all the circumstances into account, was a dismissible offence”.
The manager was out of work for 34 weeks and secured another job in April of this year, albeit at a lesser salary.
