Workplace ethics central to the Horizon IT scandal, says BNU professor
The Business and Law professor teaches students about the psychological contract created between employers and employees
Last updated 15th Mar 2024
As a new law to quash the wrongful convictions of subpostmasters caught up in the Horizon IT scandal was introduced by the Government yesterday, we're hearing how the workplace ethics were affected from a University professor in Buckinghamshire.
The scandal was brought back to light following a TV drama, which sparked many to share their stories, and MPs to put pressure on the government for compensation to be brought.
The proposed Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill will now exonerate those convicted in England and Wales on the basis of faulty Horizon accounting software in what has been branded the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
"The employees who were affected seem to have lost trust because the trust in them didn't feel like it was there."
The failings of the IT system, the legal battle fought by those wrongly accused, and the employer-employee relationship are all elements central to the scandal.
The latter is being taught by Janet Cash, Law and Business Professor at Buckinghamshire New University.
She said: "The fairness, the trust, the support that was expected by employees is being reported as being non-existent."
"The employees who were affected seem to have lost trust because the trust in them didn't feel like it was there."
According to her, it all starts with workplace ethics, which she labels a psychological contract which was, in this case, destroyed.
She said: "The psychological contract can be eroded and ultimately destroyed for a number of reasons, one of which is that balance."
"It may be that the employer's expectations of employees is not being met."
"It can happen anywhere and it's not dependent on the size of the organisation either, even in small and medium enterprises."
More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Convictions will now be automatically quashed if they meet the following criteria:
• Were prosecuted by the Post Office or Crown Prosecution Service
• Were for offences carried out in connection with Post Office business between 1996 and 2018
• Were for relevant offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting
• Were against subpostmasters, their employees, officers, family members or direct employees of the Post Office working in a Post Office that used the Horizon system software.
Those with overturned convictions will receive an interim payment with the option of immediately taking a fixed and final offer of £600,000, according to No 10.
The Prime Minister says it marks an "important step forward in finally clearing" their names after their lives were "callously torn apart" by the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.