Reference no: EM133348951

Case Scenario: Britney Paterson is the HR manager of the Winnipeg location of ABC Construction Ltd. and she is responsible for the day-to-day HR operations and policies for this branch. Things were starting to unravel at this location .......and Brittany was asked by the company CEO to deal with them.

The company policy regarding employee communications was quite simple: "What goes on in the company, stays at the company". This policy was communicated regularly to all employees. Joan Johnson had violated this policy. A couple of weeks ago Joan has strike a conversation with a co-worker, Natalie, who has recently moved from Wilmington to Winnipeg because a senior member of management in the Wilmington office had become raged when Natalie refused his sexual advances. He had threatened Natalie with dismissal, but after a short discussion, an agreement was reached that Natalie would move to the Winnipeg location. Joan became enraged when she heard Natalie's story, and immediately notified the HR Department, but also the media in both Winnipeg and Wilmington. Brittany (HR Manager) is now trying to decide how she should handle the situation.

Max, is the 31-year-old accountant of the company, who, although based in Winnipeg, travels throughout Western Canada as part of his job. He is considered a very good employee. He is well known in the business community, is very involved in the local association of management accountants and is one of the highly visible members of a number of charitable organizations in the Winnipeg area. Max is married and has two children. About three weeks ago the head office started monitoring the Internet usage off employees. Much to their surprise, they found out that Max had visited several pornographic websites on four different evenings. The records revealed that he had spent on average of about three hours on each evening visiting such websites. While Max used company property (computer) to visit such sites, such visits were made outside of regular working hours.

While the company had been providing Internet access to employees for a number of years, it had not developed a policy on Internet usage.

Paul is a 44-year-old supervisor at one of the Winnipeg construction sites. He supervises 20 employees, and his performance evaluations are among the best. He also attends night school to acquire his Bachelor of Engineering and he is well liked by his coworkers. One month ago, Paul went on to Toronto to attend a two-day training program for construction supervisors. After the first day of sessions, Paul went out for dinner with two colleagues from different cities.

During the meal, the other two supervisors told Paul that they had developed a scheme in which they wrote off as waste a small amount of good formwork. They actually kept the formwork in a storage and sold it to a discount to a friend. As one of the individuals said: "We are not talking big money here, just an extra $200 a week. Afterall, we are all underpaid and our salaries are not keeping up with inflation". They then asked Paul if he wants to join them.

Recently an auditor uncovered the scheme. The two colleagues were fired. While the audit confirmed that no other employee was involved, Paul admitted knowing about the fraud. In discussions with top management, the point was raised of whether Paul had a duty to report the fraud.

QUESTION: Do you recommend that Paul be dismissed? is there just cause for dismissal? What would be reasonable notice in the event that a court ruled that the organization did not have just cause to terminate Paul? If you were in Paul's position, would you have reported the scheme to senior management?