There may be occasions when it is necessary to ask an employee to temporarily stop working while you carry out an investigation. This process is called a suspension or ‘suspension pending an investigation’.

It is perfectly legal to do this, either where the employment contract allows or if there is a serious reason to justify this, such as allegations of gross misconduct, such as Fraud or Sexual harassment as you wouldn’t want either of these things to potentially re-occur during the period of investigation, so it would be sensible to suspend someone in these circumstances, pending an investigation. During this period, normal pay and benefits should normally continue.

However, suspension may only be appropriate in certain situations, and there are a lot of important details involved in making this decision, which is why it’s important for you to double check everything with an experienced HR professional before you go ahead and suspend someone!

This is something we can help you with, so please do get in touch for a confidential chat today if this is something you may need to do, we want you to get it right!