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I have tried to keep the following as brief as possible while still retaining all pertinent facts.
For the past ten years, my wife has worked at an accounting partnership in the billing department. Her job is to bill work done by the fee earning partners.
The basic outline of the process is as follows
Historically, attempts to resolve the out of time bills have been undertaken by the Admin Director because the two people in the accounts department were already hard pressed to process the volume of non-contentious bills. Various attempts were also made to implement systems that would prevent the three month deadline being missed in future. These were met with varying degrees of success but systemic problems remained. There are therefore two elements to the problem: A systemic problem that allows work packets to go unbilled and a managerial problem of responsibility for the those work packets that miss the deadline
A year ago the partnership merged with another partnership. In addition to the upheaval associated with any merger, the post of Admin Director was made redundant and the incumbent post holder left. The responsibilities of the Admin Director were absorbed into a newly created role of Chief Finance and Administration officer. The merger resulted in the number of accountants increasing from 40 to 110. There was no corresponding increase in the number of people in the accounts department.
A few months after the merger, my wife’s colleague left leaving my wife to process all the bills herself. At this point she started working 12 – 14 hour days to get through the work load. Several months after that two more people were recruited to work in the accounts room followed by a third person to handle the admin (photocopying etc.). However, my wife is still having to work 12 -14 hour days to get through the work load because, of the two new recruits, one is incompetent and is now only allowed to bill the most simple situations and the other is lazy. My wife has raised the laziness with their mutual boss the Chief Finance and Administration officer, who has agreed that there were concerns as to his performance .
Out of the blue my wife received a letter from one of the accountants advising her that she was being investigated for gross misconduct because there were 150 bills that had passed the three month deadline. She wasn’t advised who had made the allegation nor what the specifics of it were. At the investigative meeting the investigator was extremely aggressive and refused to listen to my wife’s attempts to explain the process but instead repeatedly referred to her job description and said that she was responsible and it was therefore all her fault. She handed a statement and a large amount of documentary evidence in support of her case to the investigator. This documentation included the job description for the Chief Finance and Administration officer, which makes clear that it is this person that is ultimately responsible for all billing. In return she got the work flow system references for the 150 unbilled work packets
The report of the investigation has now been completed and the investigator has decided to recommend that she face a disciplinary hearing for gross misconduct. He has concluded that it is my wife and my wife alone that is entirely responsible for the 150 bills not being done in time and has ignored both the written statement that she supplied and all the evidence that supported it. The tone of the report is extremely nasty and, I presume in an attempt to justify a gross misconduct charge, makes a number of unsubstantiated slurs as to my wife’s integrity and ability to do the job. My wife has done some analysis of the 150 work packets and discovered that less than half are unbilled. The remainder are a combination of either billed and paid or closed in preference for another work packet under which all the clients concurrent work was billed (so as to produce one big invoice rather than a number of small invoices). Of those that are unbilled, most are stuck in the secretarial department but, for reasons too complex to go into here, all will be paid.
I have never been involved in anything like this and, although learning fairly quickly would appreciate some tactical advice as to how to defend this. My initial thought was to raise a grievance against the investigator for bias and failing to investigate properly but I suspect that this may be better saved for the tribunal that appears to be the inevitable result of all this: My gut feeling is that, post-merger, my wife’s face no longer fits and she is being forced out with the disciplinary process being used as a cover. This is ironic really because if they had made her a generous offer to go quietly I’m sure she would. I’d appreciate any help or advice that anyone is able to give here, particularly anyone with experience and a view on tactics. For my own inexperience part I don't view the allegations (whatever they are) as being a disciplinary matter at all and certainly not one of gross misconduct
For the past ten years, my wife has worked at an accounting partnership in the billing department. Her job is to bill work done by the fee earning partners.
The basic outline of the process is as follows
1. The accountant completes the work for the client and advises the secretarial team that the work has completed, what the work was and what the fee should be via a form
2. The secretarial team collate all the necessary paperwork and submit it to the accounts department
3. The accounts department bill the client, chase any outstanding bills, then pay the accountant the billed fee minus a 15% cut to cover the admin costs
There is a three month contractual deadline starting at the completion of the work, after which the fees, if not billed, will no longer be payable. It can be seen from the above that there are 3 people involved in the billing process, each of which has to complete their work in a timely manner to ensure that the fees can be billed. There have been a number of problems over the years where the process hasn’t completed in time and fees have been lost. The causes of this are many and varied but include the accountants not completing their form, the secretaries not submitting the paperwork to the accounts room, the secretaries not updating the work flow system that the work packet is complete (which would alert the accounts department to the start of the three month countdown) and various problems within the accounts department itself.Historically, attempts to resolve the out of time bills have been undertaken by the Admin Director because the two people in the accounts department were already hard pressed to process the volume of non-contentious bills. Various attempts were also made to implement systems that would prevent the three month deadline being missed in future. These were met with varying degrees of success but systemic problems remained. There are therefore two elements to the problem: A systemic problem that allows work packets to go unbilled and a managerial problem of responsibility for the those work packets that miss the deadline
A year ago the partnership merged with another partnership. In addition to the upheaval associated with any merger, the post of Admin Director was made redundant and the incumbent post holder left. The responsibilities of the Admin Director were absorbed into a newly created role of Chief Finance and Administration officer. The merger resulted in the number of accountants increasing from 40 to 110. There was no corresponding increase in the number of people in the accounts department.
A few months after the merger, my wife’s colleague left leaving my wife to process all the bills herself. At this point she started working 12 – 14 hour days to get through the work load. Several months after that two more people were recruited to work in the accounts room followed by a third person to handle the admin (photocopying etc.). However, my wife is still having to work 12 -14 hour days to get through the work load because, of the two new recruits, one is incompetent and is now only allowed to bill the most simple situations and the other is lazy. My wife has raised the laziness with their mutual boss the Chief Finance and Administration officer, who has agreed that there were concerns as to his performance .
Out of the blue my wife received a letter from one of the accountants advising her that she was being investigated for gross misconduct because there were 150 bills that had passed the three month deadline. She wasn’t advised who had made the allegation nor what the specifics of it were. At the investigative meeting the investigator was extremely aggressive and refused to listen to my wife’s attempts to explain the process but instead repeatedly referred to her job description and said that she was responsible and it was therefore all her fault. She handed a statement and a large amount of documentary evidence in support of her case to the investigator. This documentation included the job description for the Chief Finance and Administration officer, which makes clear that it is this person that is ultimately responsible for all billing. In return she got the work flow system references for the 150 unbilled work packets
The report of the investigation has now been completed and the investigator has decided to recommend that she face a disciplinary hearing for gross misconduct. He has concluded that it is my wife and my wife alone that is entirely responsible for the 150 bills not being done in time and has ignored both the written statement that she supplied and all the evidence that supported it. The tone of the report is extremely nasty and, I presume in an attempt to justify a gross misconduct charge, makes a number of unsubstantiated slurs as to my wife’s integrity and ability to do the job. My wife has done some analysis of the 150 work packets and discovered that less than half are unbilled. The remainder are a combination of either billed and paid or closed in preference for another work packet under which all the clients concurrent work was billed (so as to produce one big invoice rather than a number of small invoices). Of those that are unbilled, most are stuck in the secretarial department but, for reasons too complex to go into here, all will be paid.
I have never been involved in anything like this and, although learning fairly quickly would appreciate some tactical advice as to how to defend this. My initial thought was to raise a grievance against the investigator for bias and failing to investigate properly but I suspect that this may be better saved for the tribunal that appears to be the inevitable result of all this: My gut feeling is that, post-merger, my wife’s face no longer fits and she is being forced out with the disciplinary process being used as a cover. This is ironic really because if they had made her a generous offer to go quietly I’m sure she would. I’d appreciate any help or advice that anyone is able to give here, particularly anyone with experience and a view on tactics. For my own inexperience part I don't view the allegations (whatever they are) as being a disciplinary matter at all and certainly not one of gross misconduct
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