Glossary — Every Term, Explained Simply
Every word the Discipline module uses, in plain language. Terms are grouped by theme; use the search box (or the outline on the right) to jump straight to one. Where a term comes from Ghana's Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) the section is cited; where the Act is silent, we say so — those practices come from natural justice (the fair-hearing principles the NLC applies) or from your own handbook.
How to read a law reference: Act 651 s.62 means section 62 of the Labour Act, 2003. The Act is the floor, not the ceiling — your handbook or collective agreement can be more generous to the employee, never less.
The people on a case
Respondent
The employee who has to answer the allegation — the person the case is about. On a grievance the respondent is optional (a grievance may be about a situation, not a person).
Complainant / Reported by
Whoever raised the matter. On a disciplinary case it's usually the line manager; on a grievance it's the aggrieved employee.
Anonymous report
A report where the reporter's name is withheld from the record. The system still requires a named HR validator before the case can pass triage — someone accountable must vouch that the report is worth pursuing. Not from the Act — good practice so anonymous reports can't be weaponised.
Validator
The named HR person who reviews an anonymous report and confirms there's a case to answer. Their name goes on the record; the reporter's does not.
Initiator
The supervisor or manager who starts cases. The dashboard tracks cases by initiating supervisor because one person raising most of the cases is a warning sign about the supervisor, not the staff.
Panel
The group of people who sit in a disciplinary hearing and recommend a decision. Configured in Setup with members, a quorum and a decision rule (e.g. majority).
Quorum
The minimum number of panel members who must actually sit for the hearing to count. If exclusions (see conflict of interest) drop attendance below quorum, the hearing cannot proceed.
Conflict of interest
A reason a person cannot judge a case. The system enforces two absolutes: the complainant and the investigator can never sit on the panel, and a rehearing excludes everyone who sat the first time. Optional per-panel rules also exclude the respondent's supervisor or department. Not spelled out in the Act — it is the "no one judges their own cause" rule of natural justice, and the NLC applies it.
Investigator
The person appointed to establish the facts before a decision — interviews, documents, witness statements. Investigating disqualifies them from judging: they present findings, they don't decide.
Witness
Anyone who gives an account during an investigation or hearing. Their statement is recorded on the case file.
Representative / Companion
The person the employee brings to a hearing — a colleague or a union representative. The right to organise and be represented by a union flows from Act 651 s.79 (freedom of association). Refusing a requested companion is the most common procedural defect — the module flags it in red wherever it happens.
Appeal authority
The role that decides an appeal. The rule the system enforces: whoever issued the sanction can never determine the appeal, and the appeal authority must outrank the issuer.
The case itself
Case
The file everything hangs off — allegations, evidence, queries, responses, hearings, findings, sanctions, appeals and the audit trail. One case = one matter about one respondent.
Case type
Disciplinary (the employer alleges misconduct) or Grievance (the employee raises a complaint). Both run on the same machinery; a grievance has no offence and no sanction path.
Case reference
The permanent number on the file, e.g. DC/2026/0007 — generated when the case is created, never changed, never reused.
Three tiers
The module's response model: a counselling note (tier 1, the quiet word), a disciplinary case (tier 2, the formal process), and the grievance track (employee-initiated). Most issues should die at tier 1.
Counselling note
The written record of an informal correction: employee, what was discussed, validity period (default 6 months). It is not a sanction — it isn't appealable and doesn't appear in appraisals. It exists to prove the employee was told, and it counts at the tier boundary: a repeat inside the validity window justifies escalating to a case.
Grievance
A complaint by an employee — about workload, treatment, pay, a colleague. Raised from the employee portal (or by HR on the employee's behalf), triaged, investigated, decided and closed on the same audited machinery. Under Act 651 s.64 an unresolved workplace grievance can end up before the NLC, so the record matters just as much.
Visibility
Who can see the case. Restricted — named participants only (harassment, financial matters; even the line manager is excluded); HR only; Department. New cases default to the company's configured default, normally Restricted. Confidentiality is also a Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) obligation — discipline data is personal data.
Audit trail / Case event
The append-only log under every case: who did what, when, from which status to which. Nothing on it can be edited or deleted — it is the chronology the case pack prints and the evidence the NLC reads.
Case pack
The one-click bundle of the entire case — report, allegations, disclosed evidence, query and response, hearing minutes, decision, sanction letter, appeal — as one ordered, printable document on the company letterhead. Built for the day a dismissal is challenged.
Working days
Deadlines in the module (response periods, appeal windows, hearing notice) count working days: weekends and the company's holiday calendar are skipped. The Act states notice in ordinary days/weeks/months (s.17); the module uses working days for internal process deadlines because that is fairer to the employee.
SLA
Service-level agreement — the internal clock on each step (e.g. "respond to a query within 5 working days"). Breached means the deadline passed. SLAs discipline the process, not the employee.
Offences and sanctions
Offence
A defined act of misconduct in your catalogue — e.g. Lateness, Insubordination, Theft. Its definition is printed verbatim on the query letter, so it's written in plain words, not legal shorthand. Misconduct as a ground for termination comes from Act 651 s.15 and s.62(b) — but only proven misconduct, which is what the whole process exists to prove.
Offence catalogue
The company's list of offences, grouped by class and category, with effective dates. Cases always use the catalogue as it stood on the incident date — you cannot change the rules after the fact.
Offence class
How serious the offence type is: Minor, Major or Gross. The class picks the procedure — a minor offence runs the short procedure; gross misconduct forces the full one (investigation, possible suspension, mandatory hearing).
Offence category
What the offence is about — Attendance, Conduct, Safety, Financial, Harassment, Confidentiality, Insubordination, Substance, Property. Categories power the dashboard's pattern heatmap. (Safety duties: Act 651 s.118; sexual harassment is defined in Act 651 s.175, and harassment-linked termination is unfair under s.63.)
Occurrence
Which time this is, for this employee and this offence: 1st, 2nd, 3rd… Counted at triage from prior upheld, unspent records only — dismissed cases and expired records don't count against anyone.
Sanction
The formal penalty at the end of a proven case — the outcome. (The process is the case; the outcome is the sanction.)
Sanction type
A kind of penalty in your catalogue: verbal warning (recorded), written warning, final written warning, suspension without pay, demotion, dismissal. Each has a severity rank and a validity period.
Sanction ladder
Per offence, the recommended sanction per occurrence — e.g. lateness: 1st = counselling, 3rd = written warning, 5th = final warning. Severity can never decrease down the ladder. The ladder is why two employees who did the same thing the same number of times get the same penalty — consistency is half of fairness at the NLC.
Recommended sanction
What the ladder (or an escalation rule) proposes at triage. It is pre-selected when the sanction is issued — a recommendation, not an order.
Override
Issuing a different sanction than recommended. Allowed, but it demands a written justification on the record, stays within the offence's floor and ceiling, and is counted on the dashboard (override rate) — a high rate means the ladder and reality disagree.
Terminal sanction
A sanction that ends employment — dismissal. The system physically requires a concluded hearing first; there is no configuration where dismissal skips the hearing. Termination grounds and notice: Act 651 ss.15, 17, 62; wrongly done, it becomes unfair termination under s.63, remediable by the NLC under s.64 (reinstatement, re-employment or compensation).
Spent sanction / validity
Every sanction expires after its validity period (e.g. a written warning valid 6 months). Once spent, it no longer counts toward occurrence numbers. The dashboard's compliance clock shows sanctions going spent in the next 30 days.
Payroll effect
What a sanction does to pay, automatically: a suspension without pay or a fine raises the deduction instruction in Payroll — no side-channel emails.
Escalation rule
An automatic recommendation trigger: "3rd lateness in 12 months → final written warning". First matching rule wins, and it only ever recommends — a human decides.
The process, stage by stage
Triage
The sorting step right after a report: HR (or the manager) examines it and decides what it actually is — pick the offence from the catalogue in force on the incident date, snapshot its class and procedure onto the case, count the occurrence, and see the ladder's recommendation. Think of a hospital triage nurse: nothing is treated yet; the case is classified so the right procedure applies. A report with no substance is dismissed at triage and the respondent's record stays clean.
Allegation
The specific charge, in writing: what the employee is said to have done, when and where (the particulars). A query cannot be issued until at least one allegation is on file — the employee must know exactly what they are answering. This is the "reason for the charge" half of the fair-hearing rule the NLC applies.
Evidence
Anything that supports (or undermines) an allegation — documents, photos, attendance records, statements. Evidence is registered on the case with who collected it and when.
Disclosure
Releasing evidence to the employee, with a timestamp. The principle: the employee must see what the decision-maker saw, before the decision. An undisclosed item on a decided case is a defect — the dashboard counts them.
Query
The formal written "please explain yourself" letter, served on the employee (on their portal) with the allegations, the disclosed evidence and a working-day response deadline. The right to be heard before punishment is the heart of procedural fairness — no path in the module reaches a sanction without a query.
Response
The employee's answer, in their own words, from their portal. If HR types up a verbal answer instead (transcribed response), it is held until the employee verifies the transcription — nobody's words are put in their mouth.
Lapse / Minuting a lapse
If the deadline passes in silence, HR clicks Minute Lapsed Deadline. The lapse is recorded, never assumed — and silence is not an admission of guilt. The case proceeds on the evidence.
Precautionary suspension
Sending the employee home (normally on full pay) while a serious matter is investigated. It is not a sanction and implies no guilt — it protects evidence, people or money. It has a planned end date, must be reviewed if it runs past it, blocks leave approvals while active, and auto-lifts when the case closes. The Act doesn't regulate suspension directly; unpaid or indefinite suspension is where employers get into unfair-treatment territory, so the module defaults to paid and time-boxed.
Investigation
The fact-finding stage for serious cases: an appointed investigator, witness statements, a findings report. The offence definition can require it; a gross-misconduct procedure always includes it.
Hearing
The formal sitting where the employee answers the charge before a panel: notice served in advance (minimum notice days are configured), attendance recorded, representation offered, minutes taken, votes recorded, conclusion reached. Mandatory before any terminal sanction.
Finding
The decision on each allegation: Upheld (proven), Not upheld, Partially upheld, Withdrawn, or No finding — insufficient evidence. Every allegation gets one — there are no half-decided cases. Only upheld findings can carry a sanction; "proven misconduct" is the exact language of Act 651 s.62(b).
Appeal
The employee's challenge to the decision or the sanction, lodged from their portal within the appeal window. Heard by someone senior to (and other than) the issuer.
Appeal window
The working-day period after a sanction during which the employee may appeal. A case cannot close while the window is open unless the employee has waived the appeal in writing.
Appeal outcomes
Dismissed — sanction confirmed · Sanction reduced · Sanction increased · Finding overturned · Rehearing ordered (before a fresh panel — nobody who sat the first time). A substituted sanction supersedes the original: the old one stops counting but stays visible on the trail — history is never rewritten.
Overturn rate
The dashboard's headline quality number: the share of determined appeals that changed the outcome. A high rate means first-instance decisions are getting it wrong — retrain the deciders or fix the process.
Closure
The end of the case, with a closure reason: sanction served, dismissed at triage, allegation withdrawn, employee resigned or dismissed, referred to the NLC or police, time-barred, duplicate. Closing auto-lifts any active suspension; a closed case is read-only forever.
Institutions and instruments
Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651)
Ghana's principal employment statute. The sections this module leans on: s.15 (grounds of termination) · s.17 (notice) · s.62 (fair termination — including proven misconduct) · s.63 (unfair termination) · s.64 (remedies before the NLC) · s.79 (freedom of association / union representation) · s.118 (occupational safety) · s.175 (definitions, including sexual harassment).
NLC — National Labour Commission
The statutory body (established under Part XVIII of Act 651) that hears unfair-termination and labour complaints. When an employee challenges a dismissal there, the employer must prove the ground and the procedure were fair. The case pack is your file for that day.
Natural justice
The two fair-hearing rules courts and the NLC apply even where the Act is silent: hear the other side (no sanction without notice of the charge and a chance to answer) and no one judges their own cause (conflict screening, independent appeal). Most of the module's hard gates are these two rules in software.
Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843)
Why discipline records default to restricted visibility, notifications are suppressed on sensitive cases, and retention is policy-driven — discipline data is personal data.
Employee handbook / Collective agreement (CBA)
Your own rules — offence definitions, ladders, procedures. The module's catalogue is where they become executable. They may improve on the Act's minimums, never undercut them.
See also: Key Concepts for how these pieces fit together, and the FAQ for the data rules.
Disclaimer: this glossary is practical guidance for using AstraHR, not legal advice. Section references are to the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) as enacted; have your lawyer confirm interpretations that matter to a live dispute.