Event report

Webinar with Rilani Advocates LLP

Managing Employee Termination: Insights into Summary Dismissal and Probation

In today’s webinar on Managing Employee Termination: Insights into Summary Dismissal and Probation, Nzilani Mweu, partner and founder, Rilani Advocates took us through the presentation.

Usually, employment is terminated through the end of a fixed term contract, dismissal, redundancy, resignation, or retirement. Today's discussion focused on summary dismissal and probationary termination as peculiar circumstances
in which an employer may terminate an employment contract and some of the applicable laws.
These laws provide the specific terms and conditions for employee termination.

Summary dismissal occurs when an employer terminates the employment of an employee without notice or with less notice than the employee is entitled to under contractual terms, usually due to gross misconduct accounting to fundamental breach of their contract.
It is important to list what gross misconduct is in the company policy and the employees should also be aware.

We also looked at the procedure for summary dismissal which involves Investigation, Disciplinary hearing, Deciding the outcome and Informing the employee of the outcome. Internal legal counsel can be present in the disciplinary hearing as a committee member but cannot be allowed to represent the employee in court because of the conflict of interest.

Nzilani also addressed some unfair reasons for dismissal or disciplinary penalty and severance pay in cases of redundancy. If the right procedure is not followed, then the employer is liable to pay damages to the employee.

The presentation concluded with a Q&A session which was quite informative as it addressed various concerns that attendees had.

A huge thank you to Nzilani Mweu and Rilani Advocates for the insightful presentation and to all attendees for their engagement.