How to dismiss an employee: misconduct at the year-end party

To dismiss an employee in South Africa for misconduct at the year-end function, you need three things in order. Send rules before the event, write a record on the night, and hold a fair hearing afterwards. Dismissing on the night, in anger, is how a fair reason becomes an unfair dismissal.

Year-end functions are coming, and GoLegal warned on 8 October that behind the goodwill of the office party lies a web of potential liability for employers. The rules for a fair dismissal are in the Code of Good Practice: Dismissal, gazetted on 4 September 2025, which replaced the old Schedule 8 code. For an owner, the practical risk is narrower. Something will happen at the party, and in January you will need to show what the rule was, what happened and how you decided.

This guide takes about an hour to set up before the event and costs nothing.

Before you start

• Your disciplinary code, the one employees signed or were shown. If you do not have one, the rules in Step 1 carry more weight.
• A named person in charge on the night who will not be drinking.
• A blank incident form, paper or on a phone, with fields for time, place, people and witnesses.

Step 1: Send the rules for the function in writing

Two weeks before, send every employee a short note. It should say the function is a work event and that workplace conduct rules apply. Name the obvious ones: harassment, violence, damage to property, and driving after drinking.

Say what the business provides: the venue, the bar tab and its limit, transport home. Ask each person to reply to confirm they read it. A rule nobody was told about is a weak basis for a dismissal.

Step 2: Name who is in charge on the night

One manager, sober, with authority to close the bar and send people home. Their job is to stop an incident getting worse and to record it. It is not to discipline anybody that night.

Step 3: Record the incident before you go home

Whoever is in charge writes down what they saw, the same night. Time, place, who was involved, what was said or done, and who else saw it. They note any injury or damage. They do not write conclusions such as "he was drunk"; they write what they observed, such as "he could not stand unaided".

Next morning, ask each witness for a short signed statement in their own words. Keep any video somebody sent to the group chat, with the date and who sent it.

Step 4: Do not dismiss on the night

If the person needs to be kept away from work while you investigate, take advice on a precautionary suspension and put it in writing. Say it is not a finding. A dismissal shouted across a dance floor will be treated as a dismissal without a hearing.

Step 5: Decide whether it is a workplace matter

The Code's first question is whether the employee broke a rule regulating conduct in, or of relevance to, the workplace. The function was a work event, so conduct there generally falls under your rules. Conduct at an after-party at somebody's house is harder. Ask whether the conduct affected the business, colleagues or customers. Write down your answer and why.

Step 6: Charge in writing and give time to prepare

Give the employee a written notice of the hearing. It should state the specific charge in enough detail to understand, and the date and time. Say they may be assisted by a fellow employee or a trade union representative. Where reasonably possible, the hearing should be in a language they are comfortable with. The Code asks for a reasonable period to prepare.

Step 7: Hold the hearing and hear their side

Use a chairperson who was not at the incident, if you can. Present the statements and let the employee answer them, on the charge and on the sanction. The enquiry does not have to be formal, but it has to give them a real chance to respond. Minute it.

Step 8: Decide the sanction, and check it against the last one

Dismissal is for serious misconduct, or for repeated misconduct after warnings. Look at what you did the last time something similar happened. Treating the operations manager more gently than a driver for the same thing is the classic way a fair dismissal becomes an unfair one. The Code calls consistency a significant factor, though inconsistency is not decisive where the misconduct makes the relationship intolerable.

Give the outcome in writing, with the reason. Tell the employee they may refer a dispute to the CCMA, or to a bargaining council that covers your sector. Under section 191 of the Labour Relations Act that must happen within 30 days of the dismissal, unless good cause is shown for a late referral.

Step 9: Make the payslip agree with the outcome

Final pay must match the letter: whatever notice and leave pay you owe, and the last date of employment. A payslip that shows a different last day from the letter undoes your own paperwork.

What breaks here

The December shutdown. The incident is on 5 December and the site closes on the 12th. The hearing slips to late January, and the witnesses have forgotten. Hold it before the shutdown, or take the statements before people leave.

The open bar. If the business poured freely and arranged no transport, the drunken-driving charge will be argued against your own arrangements.

The group chat. A video posted in a staff WhatsApp group raises POPIA and harassment questions of its own. Keep it as evidence and ask that it not be shared further.

When this stops being enough

For one incident a year, a folder and a template letter work. The trouble comes with forty staff on three sites and a disciplinary history in four places: the paper file, the HR consultant's email, the payroll and a manager's memory. Then nobody can show what you did last time, which is the test in Step 8.

Zorah connects the HR records, payroll and documents a business already keeps, so the warning, the hearing outcome and the final payslip sit on one employee record. The single record of who was told what, and when is what an arbitrator reads first.

This week, write the one-page note for your year-end function and decide who will be in charge on the night.