Administrator wins case against nursing home

An administrator who was unfairly dismissed from her job at a County Galway nursing home has been awarded €55,000 in compensation.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal, following two hearings, ruled that Oranmore Nursing Home wrongly dismissed one of its employees, an administrator who had responsibility for payroll and finance. The hearings took place last year and the ruling was issued this week by the Labour Court.

In September 2012, a chartered accountant was hired by the nursing home on a consultancy basis to review the business, which was “struggling”.

During the review, the accountant found “irregularities” in relation to the claimant’s recorded hours of work and payments processed.

There were three systems in place for recording the hours worked, including a clock-in finger point system, a sign-in book and a roster system. He reviewed the system and investigated dates in 2012 and 2013.

After this process, the worker was issued with a letter on December 10 suspending her on full pay following the outcome of further investigation.

She was told of two issues: falsified timesheets on time-point system when she was absent from work and processed payroll to account for her being at work when she was on holidays.

The worker was asked to respond to the issues raised at a meeting on December 13. Further meetings took place in January and February, and she was dismissed for gross misconduct on February 19, 2014.

Patrick Keane, the owner, gave evidence the business was experiencing “serious financial problems”, which is why he hired the financial consultant, who brought concerns to him about the worker’s attendance at work and time sheets.

Mr Keane was of the view that all employees were required to clock in/sign in and clock out/sign out and he “found it incredible that the claimant had not done this as she was aware of the policy”. He met with the claimant and examined her written explanation as well as the evidence put forward by the consultant and decided to dismiss her.

The claimant, who lived in an apartment on site and was on-call as security for residents, had no disciplinary issues prior to receiving the December 10 letter. That day she was told of the investigation and was suspended.

She recalled how she had noticed some changes in work practices in early December including the removal of residents’ accounts from her responsibility. A notice appeared for all employees to clock in while previously the system was loosely observed, she said.

The system required the manual correcting of the clock-in system to provide for breaks and leave. The claimant was conscious that the system was open to error and had raised this as an issue but no changes were made. Her role involved manually entering hours on the system for all employees by using the rosters and time sheets. This information was then transferred to the payroll system. When entering times on the system the claimant was responsible for calculating and adjusting times taking into account breaks. This ensured employees were paid for the hours worked.

She said she never premeditated entering times on her clock when she was not in the workplace. She provided the nursing home with her own personal diary to support her case, and it hasn’t been returned.

In order to prove her attendance at work on the dates in dispute, the claimant requested that CCTV and cash receipt books could be checked but this was not done, the tribunal heard. When she attended the office to examine the books she established proof that she had made a lodgement on January 2 which was one of the dates she was accused of not attending work.

She said the appeal of her dismissal was not independent and the appeal officer was a personal friend of the owners.

The tribunal ruled that the nursing home had “failed to provide convincing evidence of the claimant’s non-attendance at work on the dates disputed.”

It ruled that the nursing home conceded at the hearing that she was in attendance at work on January 2 and 4, after she provided proof that she was in the workplace on those dates.

It expressed concern that minutes of meetings held with the worker were not taken and was “particularly concerned” that “no independent appeal was offered to the claimant initially although an appeal was eventually offered.”

It ruled she was unfairly dismissed and awarded €55,000 in compensation.