Mitigation may reduce more serious minor misconduct to informal action
DWP disciplinary guidance revised
PCS raised concerns, following feedback from Branches, that DWP disciplinary guidance for the application of mitigation in disciplinary cases needed improvement. DWP has agreed to introduce the necessary clarifications in the guidance for mitigation in the disciplinary guide, ‘How to Assess the level of misconduct and decide a discipline penalty.’ The change should be published on 14th April 2014 in the guidance on the Department and You Intranet site for Discipline. The changes will have immediate impact on all decisions, including appeal decisions, but DWP does not require managers to take retrospective action in closed cases.
Mitigation process clarified
Paragraph 12 of the guide for ‘How to Assess the level of misconduct and decide a discipline penalty’ clarifies that:
12. Mitigation refers to something about the case that justifies a lower penalty or outcome than the norm.
The original version of Paragraph 12 did not include the words “or outcome.” This resulted in mitigating factors not being applied to reduce the normal penalty of a First Written Warning in some cases of “more serious minor misconduct.”
Possible outcome clarified
The “Possible Outcome” column for “More serious minor misconduct” in the chart for Penalties for Misconduct after paragraph 22 of the guide for ‘How to Assess the level of misconduct and decide a discipline penalty’ has been amended to clarify that:
If managers accept mitigation put forward by the employee a First Written Warning may be reduced to informal action.
This amendment, together with the clarification under paragraph 12, now confirms that mitigating factors, when accepted by the decision maker or appeal manager, may result in a lower outcome than the norm in some cases of “more serious minor misconduct.” The normal penalty is a First Written Warning but acceptance of mitigating factors may justify a lower outcome than the norm which would be informal action.
