Failure to act constitutes misconduct

Can  failing to take action or sufficient action amount to gross misconduct sufficient to justify summary dismissal? That was the issue before the Court of Appeal in the case of Adesokan v Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd [2017] EWCA Civ 22.

The facts concerned Colin Adesokan, a regional operations manager with 26 years’ service, who had overall responsibility for several stores, and an employment survey exercise which involved getting feedback from employees.

It was an important principle of Sainsbury’s Talkback Survey that employees would be able to provide genuine feedback without fear of reprisal and it was a strict rule of the scheme that managers should not try to influence employee responses.