The Six-Month Bad Back

A case story from K3K's files — an anonymised composite. Names, sectors, locations and identifying details have been changed or merged so that no client, employee or business can be identified. The methods and outcomes are real.

The managing director of a mid-sized logistics firm called us about a warehouse supervisor who had been off sick for six months with a back injury. Statutory process had been followed impeccably: fit notes arrived on time, occupational health reviews were attended — with a stick — and the company had paid enhanced sick pay throughout, as its policy required.

The problem was the rumours. Two separate employees had mentioned, carefully, that the supervisor was "doing removals". A director's cousin swore she'd seen him carrying a sofa. HR, quite correctly, explained that rumour and a cousin are not grounds for dismissal, and that acting on them would hand him an unfair-dismissal claim gift-wrapped. This is precisely the gap professional surveillance exists to close: HR cannot follow anyone around, and shouldn't — but an evidenced fact is something HR can act on.

Proportionate by design

Workplace surveillance has to clear a higher bar than most: it must be proportionate, justified by genuine grounds — the two employee reports, documented — and targeted at answering a specific question, not fishing through a man's life. We scoped it accordingly on the consultation call: up to three non-consecutive days of observation, public places only, focused solely on whether his activity was consistent with his declared incapacity. Fixed quote, agreed in advance — the client later said the number was less than one month of the sick pay in question. (Typical pricing is covered in our cost guide.)

Day one was, in the way of these things, uneventful. School run, supermarket, home. Walking without the stick, which was noted and timestamped, but nobody loses their job over a supermarket trip — nor should they.

Day two, a Tuesday, our operative logged him leaving home at 7:40am in work boots, driving to an address across town, and spending the morning loading a Luton van with another man: wardrobes, a washing machine, the sofa of legend. Ninety minutes of it on timestamped video, from the public street. The van, it turned out, was advertised on Facebook Marketplace under a name one letter removed from his own — "man and van, no job too big."

Day three confirmed it was a business, not a favour: different address, same van, full day's work, cash visibly changing hands. We stood down. Three days had been authorised; two and a half had answered the question beyond argument.

What the client did with it

The evidence pack went to the client's employment solicitor before anyone else: video, stills, a minute-accurate observation log, and the Marketplace listing preserved with metadata by our digital team. Confronted with it at a disciplinary hearing, the supervisor resigned before the process concluded. No tribunal claim followed — there was nothing to build one on. The company tightened its absence-review triggers, and, at their solicitor's suggestion, quietly recovered part of the enhanced sick pay.

The MD's closing comment stayed with us: "I didn't want him to be at it. I wanted a reason to stop wondering." That is what workplace investigation is actually for — not gotchas, but replacing an unmanageable rumour with a manageable fact. Sometimes the fact clears the employee entirely; those reports are shorter and everyone sleeps better.

Managing a suspicion you can't act on? How workplace investigations and covert surveillance work — or talk it through in confidence with a senior investigator on 020 3343 7007.