Employee Misconduct: Can Legal Acts Justify Termination for Character Defamation?

Is there any legal act for the below kind of issue? Kindly suggest if any.

Employee Misconduct and Legal Acts

A female employee covers up or speaks wrongly about someone's character, which spoils the atmosphere of the company.

If a female employee is speaking about someone else and that person is male, you can ask her to submit the grievance to the POSH committee to address the issue. If there is no evidence on her part, dismiss the complaint and consider taking action for making hearsay complaints. However, you cannot terminate her without having any evidence.

Handling Complaints of Defamation in the Workplace

Female employees are discussing another female employee, expressing negative opinions about her character or alleging that she is having affairs with someone. Subsequently, another girl lodges a complaint with the HR department. What actions should the HR department take in response to this situation? Please provide guidance.

Issuing a Show-Cause Notice

Issue a show-cause notice asking her to explain why action should not be taken against her for making negative remarks about her fellow employees. Making negative remarks about coworkers is considered misconduct, and you can address it as a charge against the employee. Let us see what answer she provides, and if it is not satisfactory, conduct an inquiry. Based on the inquiry reports, you can then decide on an appropriate punishment.

I have a similar query. One employee tells a new employee (the former's immediate authority) about some discrepancy of another senior employee who has been with the company for many years. Later, the new employee learns that the same subordinate is gossiping badly about him with other team members through another team member.

The new employee writes to the subordinate, requesting them to abstain from this behavior and focus on work. The subordinate counters by asking for the name of the informer. The new employee responds that he won't disclose the person's name and instead questions the subordinate, implying that they were the one who had mentioned a discrepancy about the old and senior employee earlier, with a copy marked to the senior employee. However, the senior employee takes the side of the old employee and pressures management to terminate the new employee.

In this scenario and actual workplace situation, what should be the best course of action?

Thanks,

Gossiping and Employee Conduct

Gossiping is a negative behavior among employees. If you had a protocol regarding what is expected and what is not expected from employees (which is available to establishments as part of legal compliance called Standing Orders), you could address it easily. Even without a properly certified set of Standing Orders, if you had an employee handbook describing the employee-employer relationship, these kinds of attitudes could be avoided. As I pointed out in my earlier reply to Aadi Group, please initiate disciplinary action and make a decision.

Instead of initiating a disciplinary action or inquiry, the company, under undue pressure from the old and senior employee, terminates the new employee without taking any action against the old employee who gossips.

What should be the views on this matter

Regards,

It is absolutely unfair and illegal to terminate an employee based on hearsay. You should have at least conducted an inquiry before taking action against the new employee.

Now, it could become a tug of war between the supporters of the old members and the new employees. The message the company has given is that no one shall question anybody who has been with the company for a long time. That is the wrong message.

Issue a show-cause notice to @Aadi and ask her to provide justification within 48 hours as to why action should not be taken against her. If the reply or justification is not satisfactory, you may proceed to issue a warning letter for the same.

The female employee is talking absurdly about others, which is misconduct. The office atmosphere gets disturbed due to her ill-talking about others. You should call the employee, ask her to resign, or else the company can terminate her if she fails to comply.

I understand that the employee may not agree to resign. In the event of such circumstances, the company can terminate the employee by paying the notice amount. This termination is legal because it is as per the terms of appointment.

Hi, in case the discussion happened within the office premises, you can serve a show cause notice seeking an explanation from the employees and initiate action accordingly based on the evidence provided by the aggrieved employee as per your company norms. You should go through the sexual harassment policy posted on this site.

In case it is outside the purview, it is better to ignore it.