Dave Good question and I suspect you will get an array of different opinions. Purely from a h&s perspective, I believe the employer must have the right to suspend an employee following a serious accident if they believe the employee may be at risk or a risk to others. Of course, the process should be written in company procedures and properly followed. There are some overlapping issues between HR and safety, however a safety investigation should take precedence over a disciplinary and the safety investigation should not pre-empt any subsequent disciplinary action. Well, that's my opinion anyway. Ray

Thanks Ray and Steve Absolutely agree with your comments and much appreciated. When you say off-site Steve are you also including an RTA in a company car and therefore still having the right to suspend - not so sure about that scenario. Dave

ab risk I am definitley not implying (or at least I hope not) that I would take the disciplinary route and the query I had is not one on discipline policy or procedures. What I am trying to convey is procedure following an accident where safety is uppermost and reserving the right to suspend pending investigation. Dave

Good Morning, Something that has been missed here (I think) is that suspension should be treated as a neutral act which is used simply to give all parties involved time and room to sort out what happened. The problem back in the real world is that suspension is frequently seen as a disciplinary move. Therefore it is really important if someone is suspended to ensure that Safety reps/reps of employee safety etc and the work force in general are given as much information as is practical to ensure that the reason for suspending someone is understood. From personal experience this takes a lot of time and repetition of the "story" but does result in a calmer, better informed working environment that allows staff to continue to feel they have an input that will not result in more "disciplinaries" Cheers, Jim

Interesting question as, a few days ago, I had to investigate an incident where a couple hundred thousand pounds worth of damage was done to a piece of plant and the infrastructure it hit. As many of us act as combined safety and line managers splitting the role up, whilst theoretically sound, is not practicable. I had, therefore, to make an initial investigation, then with line manager hat on decide if the cupability was serious enough to warrant a fuller investigation and consequential "suspension pending investigation" or not. Actuially, the culpability was very low, even if the effect was high, so I did not suspend. However, if all participants in the incident had not been very forthcoming and there were no anomalies, then suspension would probably have been put in place. However, from a safety point of view, I wish to know why an incident occurred. If suspension is the norm (and perceived to be disciplinary) then this will inhibit future investigations to find root causes of incidents. Accordingly, I feel suspension should be the last resort, not the first - I want to know why sommat happened, not find myself against a brick wall of silence.