Phased HR Measures and Termination of Employment for Repeated Insubordination and Disruption of Organizational Order

The client requested advisory services regarding possible personnel measures and termination of the employment relationship with respect to an employee who significantly undermined organizational order by continuously using sarcastic and derogatory expressions in internal communications, repeatedly refusing to comply with legitimate work instructions, and declining to attend statutory mandatory training.

Over the course of several months, the employee repeatedly responded to email work instructions with a hostile and insulting attitude, failed to comply with requests to submit a letter of explanation, and refused to sign for statutory training. Furthermore, circumstances were confirmed in which the employee sent complaint emails about the company to external client companies. The client requested a comprehensive legal review of whether immediate dismissal was possible, or whether phased measures such as suspension or transfer were required.

The core issues in this matter were organized as follows.

First, whether the repeated refusal to perform work and acts undermining organizational order constituted grounds for disciplinary action under the rules of employment. Based on the rules of employment in effect at the time of the acts, the content of each email reply and the specific words and conduct were reconstructed clause by clause, structuring them not as a mere matter of attitude but as independent grounds for discipline corresponding to "failure to follow work instructions," "disruption of workplace order," and "poor conduct." This secured the specificity and provability of the grounds for discipline.

Second, the legality of the disciplinary procedure and the proportionality of the penalty assessment. Considering that, under recent case-law trends, the legitimacy of discipline is determined not only by the gravity of the grounds but also by procedural legitimacy, we designed a phased structure: revision of the rules of employment, written warning, conducting a colleague grievance-handling procedure, interview and caution, and, upon repeated violation, a penalty of suspension or higher. The key was establishing a response system based on records and procedures rather than an emotional reaction.

Third, the legitimacy of the transfer order. The client was considering transferring the employee to a regional workplace in connection with a plan to relocate the business. We reviewed its legality based on the case-law doctrine that balances the "business necessity" of the transfer against the "disadvantage to the employee's life." We advised that legitimacy was highly likely to be recognized if the necessity of redeploying personnel from a management standpoint, the need to resolve internal conflict, the securing of work relevance, measures to mitigate disadvantage such as a transfer allowance, and a prior interview procedure were carried out together.

In addition, we presented a scenario in which, if the fact of sending the additional complaint email to an external client company were objectively confirmed, even dismissal on the grounds of a breakdown of the relationship of trust could be legally reviewed.

In accordance with the advice, the client implemented phased personnel measures with procedural legitimacy instead of immediate dismissal, and by systematically organizing and documenting the relevant facts, established a defense system to prepare for future disputes over unfair dismissal or unfair transfer.

The crux of this matter was the process of converting the abstract evaluation of a "problematic employee" into legal grounds for discipline. Through strategic design that comprehensively reflected the interpretation of the rules of employment, case-law doctrine, the proportionality of penalty assessment, and the criteria for judging abuse of rights in a transfer, rather than emotional judgment, we were able to simultaneously achieve the two goals of restoring organizational order and managing legal risk.

Corporate HR and labor disputes are not a matter of the unlawfulness of a single act, but a matter of the initial response structure and records management. "Your Legal Team" presents strategies that convert a dispute into a controllable structure, rather than merely defending after a dispute has arisen.