Employee discipline and grievance at Pavement Field Marketing

You are the managing director of Pavement, a field marketing company based in southeast England, which designs and enacts field marketing campaigns for a growing number of clients. Pavement provides a full range of field marketing activities, including point-of-purchase auditing, merchandising, mystery shopping, sampling, and demonstrations.

The company has grown considerably over recent months and you are in the process of appointing an HR manager. Currently, all HR decisions are made by you and the office manager, Olivia. You are also in the process of interviewing for two new account executives and an administrator. Owing to your workload, you have allowed a number of HR problems to accumulate, including the following issues:

1. Steven has recently been promoted to account manager worked in his previous role of account executive for only four months. The previous account manager left abruptly, and Steven has had little guidance in carrying out his new role. Among his responsibilities is managing a team of dedicated field staff who carry out roadshows for clients' products, setting up in-store samplings, and ensuring the visibility and promotion of clients' products at the point of purchase. Steven was recently charged with setting up a demonstration at a large food trade show for a key client. However, a senior manager at the client company has phoned to complain about all the staff at the trade show lacking product knowledge and the product presentation being 'shambolic'. This follows poor feedback from another client about the poor in-store presentation of a recent promotion organized by Steven.

2. Two members of another team have made separate complaints about the excessive use of profanity by an account executive, Jamie. This follows an earlier complaint about Jamie's swearing made three months ago by an administrator who has since left the company. At that time, you spoke informally to Jamie, who denied the accusations and claimed that the administrator was just 'stirring up trouble' because he had reprimanded her for poor standard of her work. You had taken Jamie at his word, partly because he has always been one of your most successful account executives.

3. Your personal assistance, Shelley, has worked for the company for a year and a half and has proved invaluable in helping you grow the company, often staying late at the office at critical times. In the last six weeks, however, the standard of her work has dropped. She has failed to give you a number of important messages, arrived late and phoned in sick on a number of occasions, and failed to complete important tasks on time, such as compiling a much-needed report. A client also mentioned to you that she had been 'off-hand' on the phone. From overhearing private phone calls that Shelley has been making at work, you understand that she has been having marital problems

4. Your office manager, Olivia, has recently learned on the office grapevine that Beth, the company finance manager, is a regular user of recreational drugs. Olivia believes that this might account for a spate of payroll errors over recent months. As her line manager, Olivia has decided that Beth should be summarily dismissed on the basis that her drug use is having a detrimental effect on her work. She has asked you for your approval for the dismissal.

5. Steven has informed you that he has dismissed one of the temporary workers, David, who had been working on a major in-store promotion. David and a permanent worker of the promotions team, Elaine, had previously been given an informal warning about drinking alcohol on their lunch break. Subsequently, Steven had suspected that the entire promotions team had gone to the pub yesterday lunchtime to celebrate a colleague's birthday. Steven dismissed David, justifying his decision on the basis that he was a troublemaker and only had four weeks left on his six-month contract anyway. Steven assumes that having 'made an example' of David then the other team members will have learned their lesson.

Your task is to determine how best to deal with these scenarios and to identify the key issues in each case.

Olivia has informed you that the company has an employee discipline and grievance policy that complies with the latest Code of Practice. You should draw on this Code to assess how best to deal with each of the cases outlined above. She also reports that the company has a rudimentary capability procedure as advised by the company lawyer