I am investigating a disciplinary situation at the moment and need to decide how to proceed.

An employee was driving to work on Sunday morning when he crashed his car (into a lampost in full view of police car) and we have since heard, albeit unofficially that he was at twice the legal alcohol limit. He has told other employees that he feels it wasn’t his fault as he was out the night before and didn’t realise he would stil be over the limit.

This incident occured during work time as he would claim mileage as driving to & from client sites is part of the job. There is also no doubt in my mind that if this was in fact the alcohol reading then he would have still been over the limit ten minutes later when he would have reached the client’s house and started working if the accident had not occurred.

I plan to meet with him and ask him to tell me what he has been prosecuted for (court case this week). Assuming he admits to the drink driving how would you proceed?

If the facts are as we have heard then I am inclined to exert the full force of our disciplinary procedure and dismiss him for gross misconduct as stated in our policy for attending work whilst drunk.

The Director is saying that is too harsh and that we should give him another chance as it was a mistake that anyone could make to not realise they were still over the limit the next day.

I REALLY disagree with her as I think that we can all be sensible enough to take into account that we have to get up for work the next day if we go out for a drink (and he was allegedly still TWO TIMES over the limit?!)

I would appreciate your thoughts. What would you do?

Sam
Sam Swinstead