Who should chair your disciplinary hearing? A guide for small businesses

You've done the investigation. The evidence supports the allegation. Now someone needs to chair the disciplinary hearing. And this is where small businesses run into the same problem every time.

The person who investigated can't chair the hearing. The ACAS Code expects separation between the two roles. The person who gathered the evidence shouldn't also be the person deciding the outcome based on that evidence.

In a large organisation, that's easy to manage. Different managers at different levels handle each stage. In a business with one or two layers of management, the options run out fast.

Why separation matters

It's not a technicality. It's about fairness. If the same person investigates and then chairs the hearing, they've already formed a view before the employee has had a chance to present their case. The hearing becomes a formality rather than a genuine opportunity for the employee to respond.

A tribunal will ask whether the employee had a fair hearing. If the answer is "the hearing was chaired by the person who investigated, who had already concluded the allegation was founded," that's a difficult position to defend.

The appeal problem

Even if you manage to find separate people for the investigation and the hearing, you still need someone for the appeal. The ACAS Code says the appeal should be dealt with by a more senior manager, or at least someone not previously involved.

In a business where the MD ran the hearing, there's nobody more senior. And if the MD also had some involvement in the events leading to the disciplinary, the whole process looks compromised from start to finish.

This is the structural problem that small businesses face. It's not about competence. It's about running out of people.

When to bring someone in from outside

There are a few clear signals.

The person who'd normally chair the hearing was involved in the investigation or the events that led to it. There's a relationship between the hearing chair and either party that could be seen as a conflict. The allegation is serious enough that the outcome could be dismissal, and you need the process to be watertight. Or you've simply run out of managers who can take each stage without overlap.

An independent hearing chair has no relationship with anyone in the business. They'll review the investigation report and evidence, chair the hearing, question the employee and any witnesses, consider the employee's response, and write a detailed outcome letter setting out findings and the decision with reasons.

If the hearing results in dismissal, that outcome letter is the document the employee's solicitor will scrutinise first. Getting it right matters.

The cost of getting it wrong

A disciplinary process that's challenged at tribunal doesn't just cost legal fees. It costs management time, reputation, and often the goodwill of other employees who are watching how the business handles these situations.

The ACAS Code also gives tribunals the power to increase compensation by up to 25% where the Code hasn't been followed. That alone makes the investment in an independent chair worth considering for any case where dismissal is a possible outcome.

Covering the full process

I provide independent hearing chairs for disciplinary hearings, grievance hearings and appeals across Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Hull, Liverpool, Nottingham and Derby. I also run independent workplace investigations, so if you need separation between every stage of the process, I can either handle the investigation or the hearing, with a clear wall between the two.

If you've got a disciplinary process underway and you're not confident the structure is right, it's better to have that conversation now than to find out at tribunal that the process didn't hold up.