Some of us have been there and we probably all know someone who thinks they've been unfairly dismissed. The Employment Tribunal offices on Southgate Street in Bury St.Edmunds deal with hearings from Suffolk, Norfolk and parts and Cambridgeshire and Essex. Last year they had a whopping 2,558 applications from employees who felt they'd been hard done by.  | | Q & A session after the performance |
The Suffolk Chamber of Commerce have put together a workshop theatre event with Gipping Occupational Health and Picasso HR. The first performance of "Who Killed The Cleaner?" was at the St.Nicholas Centre in Ipswich. First the audience of business people hear from the boss Ebenezer Span (played by Clive Thomas, who's the Managing Director of real-life Ipswich firm Anglia IT Recruitment). He finds long-standing cleaner Marge Mopp (played by BBC Radio Suffolk presenter Maureen Garratt) in the boardroom. She's failed to clean it on time, knocked over and smashed a prestigious award and said some very rude words indeed to Mr Span when he confronts her. He tells her "you are out!". We should point out that the cleaner doesn't actually get killed. The action then moves to an employment tribunal where we hear both sides of the story. Had Marge actually been sacked? Had she ever been given warnings? Were there mitigating circumstances? The chairman of the tribunal then gives her verdict and the audience get to vote and fill in a questionnaire on whether they agree with it. In the traditional British manner, the audience backed the underdog cleaner - and these were mainly people who do the hiring and firing don't forget!  | | Maureen Garratt as Marge Mopp |
It's all quite light-hearted, but Judith Howard-Rees, who's a director of Gipping, says there are serious points to be made "It raises awareness of how important it is to treat all of your people as individuals while focusing on their business contributions. Employment Tribunals can be very expensive for a company in terms of both time and money." In the audience was Peter Shave who's a quality manager at ICI Paints in Stowmarket where they have 90 employees "It was a useful scenario, you could see it from both sides. You have got to be very careful what you say when dealing with poor performances - personal circumstances come into play." The Suffolk Chamber's hoping to stage other workplace scenarios in the future. | 
