Very often potential litigation against an employer can be stopped at a very early stage if the processes and paper work used by the employer is robust. An example was where a company, who had a full HR system prepared for them by QHR Solutions, sacked a member of staff for failure to carry out his work satisfactorily. Over a period of some months the company had done their best to support the member of staff to improve but ultimately he still failed to do the job. Eventually the employee admitted that he had a medical condition that actually prevented him from doing the job; the company had a signed Post Job Offer/Employment Health Questionnaire that clearly asks if the applicant has any medical or physical condition that might affect the job applied for and if the applicant would require any additional support or equipment to do the job. In this case the applicant had answered no to both questions and had signed the declaration, therefore the company were able to dismiss him both for failure to do the job and for failure to declare his condition. It is an offence to lie on any application documents and any lie can lead to instant dismissal.

A few weeks after his dismissal the company received a letter from a solicitor acting for the claimant claiming unfair dismissal and discrimination based on the fact of his medical condition, alleging that the employer had failed to take this into account. A letter was sent in reply to the claimant’s solicitor enclosing evidence of both the wrongful health declaration and the company’s attempts to support him and the case was withdrawn within the week.