What Is the Meaning Of Summary Dismissal & Its Importance

Duration: 5-7 minutes

Summary Dismissal is a situation where an employee is terminated with or without prior notice due to any misconduct by them.

Summary Dismissal

It refers to the act of terminating the worker instantaneously from the organization on the grounds of some dishonest or illegal activity. It may dismiss the employee from the present position, with or without prior notice or without in lieu of pay and terminated at the briefed moment.

When an employee commits a consequential breach of the contract that entitles the employer to consider it as a terminated contract without delay, it is called Summary Dismissal.

Example of Summary Dismissal

According to a Gartner report, 41 percent of the Workplace misconduct is reported. These misconducts include doing forbidden activities at the workplace, for example:

• Usage of any kind of intoxicant while working like alcohol, drugs, or other substances
• Failure to obey the workplace rules and regulations
• Failing to keep safe the company''s properties
• Dishonest activities, or fraud, harassment, or bribery
• Stealing the important data of the company to use it for some unwanted purpose

In those types of cases, the employer can issue a termination of the employee immediately without any notice and without a pay in lieu of notice (The payment that is made to an employee when they are at their notice period).

Procedures for Summary Dismissal

No matter how serious misconduct occurred, a set of rules and procedure bind the employer that he must follow to take proceedings to take some steps that reach out to terminate the process. Since the employee is entitled to a little justice, a brief inquiry is made in this regard. There are steps that are followed:

1. Conduct of disciplinary inquiries.
2. Accumulate all the relevant evidence for the purpose of proving the misconduct. The evidence is sensitive; it would be hard for the employer to proceed with any significant proof of whether an illegal act has been committed or not.
3. Once the evidence is cleared, the interrogation of the witnesses is done, and the statements are recorded.
4. A warning statement is presented to the plaintiff.
5. A disciplinary hearing of the committee is called, where discussion on the matter is made in front of the employees, including the head of this committee, HR, and the violator of the conduct.
6. All of the evidence is laid forth in front of the employees. Questions are set against him regarding the misbehave.
7. A final decision is declared at the end of the meeting.

This is how the official process of summary dismissal takes place. If an employee is held guilty, then an official summary dismissal letter is issued in their name along with the gross misconduct committed by them. That letter contains all the information regarding:

• The decision to oust the employee from the organization
• The reason for summary dismissal
• Nature of misconduct in brief
• Investigation details
• Last day of their office
• Reason for having summary dismissal as the last resort
• Right to appeal against the decision combined with the information as to whom they should appeal and when

Dismissal and Summary Dismissal

Summary dismissal and dismissal are two very far consequences from each other. Summary dismissal is one that applies with immediate effect; that is, the employee is dismissed immediately without notice and paid in lieu of the notice period. Whereas if we talk about a normal dismissal, then only a notice period is given to the employee, let''s say for a week or a month, and they are paid for that period as well.

Extreme reasons for summary dismissal are reasons that include committing illegal activities, stealing the organizations'' data. While a dismissal can be due to other reasons such as not doing the job properly, long-term illness, redundancy, disobedience.

Summary dismissal holds stringent rules and regulations in terms of the termination of the employee whereas it is not in the case of dismissal.

In a dismissal, a warning is given to the employee before asking to take leave, but it is not the case in a summary dismissal. The employee is not given any warning. The employee is immediately terminated after all the investigation is done.

Summary Dismissal results in poor effect in the professional life of an employee. So everyone at the workplace should keep the harmony and peace by following the organization''s rules and regulations.

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