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Davies Ndumiso Sibanda Labour Matters
MANY disciplinary hearings are not handled correctly because managerial employees and workers’ representatives tasked with handling them lack the necessary skills.

Being a manager or workers’ representative is not qualification to preside over disciplinary hearings. There is a need for all managers and workers’ representatives who are part of the disciplinary authority at the workplace to be trained. The benefits of training far outweigh the costs.

John, an untrained head of department, chaired a disciplinary hearing where he refused to call the complainant into the hearing and he acted as both prosecutor and judge. He gave hearsay evidence against the defendant who kept demanding that the complainant should be present. The worker was dismissed and he appealed. At appeal the employer lost the case and the case had to be started afresh due to a procedural error at huge cost to the employer.

Many employers are not sure what should be covered in the training. The training first of all covers the spirit of discipline handling and the purpose of discipline handling. Further, the training covers generic discipline handling issues like observing principles of natural justice, procedural and substantive matters, law of evidence, leading evidence and cross examination and basics in interpretation of legal terms and others.

The Zimbabwean education system does not equip students with these skills. It is employers and unions who have to invest money and times in training. The sad thing is that in the majority of cases it is chief executives and heads of departments who dodge the training but they are the least knowledgeable and at the same time they dictate the direction of labour relations. In most cases they do not take the advice of human resources practitioners who are knowledgeable, resulting in organisations having problems.

In addition to training in generic discipline matters, administrators of discipline have to be trained in handling the organisation’s code of conduct, the industry code of conduct or the national code of conduct whichever is applicable and doing role plays is a must. Without doing role plays it is difficult to tell whether participants have learnt something.

The common problem areas in administering discipline include chairing which scares many managers as the role carries with it a lot of pressure and at times the defendant brings a lawyer, trade unionist or labour consultant who is an expert on labour matters thus the chairman gets intimidated and loses control of the hearing. I have lost count of the number of cases where I have attended the hearing representing the defendant and end up dictating to the chairman what should happen. On a number of cases I have saved my clients by taking charge of the situation and putting the organisation systems on trial instead of the employee. This can easily happen when the disciplinary authority is not trained and unable to control proceedings.

Who makes a good trainer? This is a difficult question, however a good trainer must be someone knowledgeable on discipline law and able to train, with a solid track record. Not all labour consultants, lawyers or trade unions are good at training.

In conclusion, it is not advisable to have untrained people presiding over disciplinary cases as there is a high risk of having them make costly errors.

Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on:

E: [email protected]: Cellphone: 0772 375 235