Suspension at work

[irene66]

My daughter has recently been suspended from work. In November 2018 she broke up with a long standing boyfriend, work were aware & helped. In late November, sunday morning, she received 2 inappropriate text messages from her immediate boss, sent at 3am &3.40 am. She freaked out a bit & went into work Monday to talk to him, he took the day off. A colleague noticed something was wrong & took her out for a coffee, my daughter mentioned the messages & the girl stated she had also received messages in her previous job ( not the same boss) asked to see them & my daughter asked for advice. He came back into work tuesday, they had a chat & all was resolved, & my daughter was totally fine. 3 months later, after a minor disagreement at work with this same girl, she informed HR about these texts. As a result my daughter was interviewed on & off for 2 days, told she had gossiped about a senior member of management & it was a sackable offense. She was then suspended. They posted her suspension letter a few days later stating “ as a result of her recent action” she was suspended. I am incensed that neither this other girl nor the manager have been suspended over this. She is the junior in the office and is devastated at all this. She has been employed here for over 2 years, the other girl 8 months.

[Amethyst]

Ula

Good gracious ! No investigation into what the manager did at all ? Did they ask about the inappropriate messages at all ?

Tagged Ula to look in to help, but no your daughter has done nothing wrong - absolutely disgusting behaviour from her employer there IMO.

I wonder why the the other girl brought it up with HR.

[irene66]

Thank you.
Her manager was off on holiday last week, but he was interviewed on the day the other girl reported the texts and he is back today. I presume he will be called in again. She has shown & forwarded the first text to them during her interviews ( which she says were horrendous) the second one is a bit more “heavy” so she is hesitant to show it Unless she has too. they did have a chat about them when he returned to work on tuesday, he apologised, and it was forgotten about & it was back to normal. The girl was a friend of hers at uni and my daughter actually got her the job there. About a month after telling her about the texts she started acting strange, pinching her ideas & going on her computer to change my daughters work ect. My daughter snapped at her & told her not to do it. She then went to HR stating she was concerned about my daughters mental health because of these texts. My daughter has just turned 25 and is the junior in the company.

[ULA]

Sorry to hear about what has happened to your daughter. Based on what you have said my view is that her employer should be approaching this in a completely different way given that the incident was 3 months ago and your daughter had not reported it at the time. Your daughter is not the person in the wrong she is in fact the victim of inappropriate text messages, which bravely she chose to deal with by talking to the manager about them, then having "cleared the air" moved on from the incident. I presume she has not received any further texts of that nature from him.

I am also not sure whether "as a result of her recent action" if that is all the detail in her suspension letter is serious enough to warrant this course of action. Suspension is normally for an allegation of serious misconduct or a risk to the business or integrity of any investigation being conducted if she remained at work - unless there is anything else in the letter I am not sure they have justified such a course of action.

[irene66]

Thank you for your replies. My daughter has worked so hard to gain her degree and get this job, she is utterly devastated about all of this, it is making her ill, having nose bleeds & headaches, especially as it happened 3 months ago and was sorted out between herself and the manager. She has received no other text messages, of that nature since then, and the working relationship between them just carried on as normal after they discussed it and cleared it all up. In her suspension letter it only states she has been suspended “as a result of her recent actions”, and the usual blurb with pay, dont come into office, dont contact any staff etc. She has written back asking what the actual allegations & accusations are. She has no idea what this other girl has said except the MD stated something about my daughters mental health. They stated to her they were considering sacking her for gossiping about him and she could have damaged his reputation to the girl she asked advice from.

[ULA]

To be frank your daughter could have, at the time, raised a grievance against the manager for inappropriate behaviour. It is hardly gossiping when she has proof by way of the text messages and I presume the company know your daughter and this girl are friends?

[irene66]

Yes they know they were friends from uni, she was in the year above and my daughter actually got this girl a job at her workplace, after she contacted her saying she wanted to leave her previous employment. Incidently, this other girl is guilty of gossiping herself, she has sent other messages to my daughter & other staff members complaining about 2 other male members of staff. The MD & HR are aware and have copies of her texts but they are not against a senior member of staff. Should not make any difference but seems to.

[ULA]

There are some options available to your daughter but suggest we see what the outcome of the investigation is.

When was your daughter put on suspension?

[irene66]

Yes I agree she needs to wait to see the result of the investigations. She was put on a weeks suspension stating 4th March, the MD contacted her on the following friday to say suspended another week.

[ULA]

You know where we are as and when your daughter knows the outcome.