What should You Pay Attention to as an Employer?
Employee is a swimming instructor at a sports facility. A guest behaves provocatively and threatens to enter the swimming pool despite the employee’s instructions and safety regulations. According to the employer, there was allegedly intimidating and threatening behavior towards guests with loud shouting. The employee receives a written warning.
The employee protests and later the written warning is converted by the employer into a ‘note in the personnel file’, however, still in strong terms and partly based on new accusations. The employee allegedly failed to lower the pool bottom according to regulations and the employee allegedly addressed a colleague in an intimidating manner.
The employee brings the matter before the court, submitting written witness statements that present a different picture than the accusations made by the employer.
The court rules in favor of the employee and orders the employer to remove the unfounded accusations and the wrongfully included note from the personnel file.
How does the court reach this judgment:
- An employer is authorized to establish and maintain a personnel file and to record therein what they deem important.
- An employee can object to the inclusion of certain information if this conflicts with the obligations of good employership (Article 7:611 of the Civil Code).
- The employer must precede any note in the employee’s file with a careful (factual) investigation.
- The employer must provide the employee with an opportunity for a hearing.
In
this case
, there was no evidence of a prior careful investigation or hearing.
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The utmost care has been taken in preparing this blog. However, it only describes some main points and does not aim to be complete. Therefore, no rights can be derived from this blog.
