For employers · Operational map · Frame, not advice

A senior employee is drinking. You have been told. By Monday, legal, clinical and reputational questions may all be live.

Whether the firm is FTSE-100 or 30 partners in a regional office, the next 72 hours have the same moving parts: a duty of care, an employment process, a clinical question, and a reputational risk. Each one moves on a different clock. This page is a map, not advice.

Independent. Written by someone who has been the senior employee in question, on the other side of it. No referral fees. No financial interest in any treatment provider, broker or insurer.

This page is for the person who has just been told. An HR Director, in-house counsel, a chief of staff, a managing partner, an occupational health lead, or the employment lawyer being briefed on a Sunday evening. It is not legal advice and it is not a clinical opinion. It is the moving parts on one page so that the calls you do make are made with the picture in front of you.

The 24-hour brief

What an HR Director, in-house counsel or chief of staff usually has to clarify within the first day:

Who has been told what. Inside the firm. Outside the firm. In writing.
Whether the employee is at work today. Driving. With clients. Holding regulated responsibilities.
Whether anyone is at risk right now. Colleague, client, member of the public, the employee themselves.
Whether the firm has an immediate notification duty. Regulator, insurer, board, audit committee.
Who is the right internal owner. HR Director / People Partner / GC / Managing Partner.
Whether occupational health has seen them in the last twelve months.

This is not a checklist to send to the employee. It is a checklist for the person making the call.

The evidence frame

Before any process starts, the firm's record of what is known and how it is known will matter more than people expect. Three habits, started early, save months later.

Keep allegation, observation and opinion separate. "X said Y about Z" is not the same as "I saw Z slurring at the 3pm meeting" is not the same as "I think Z has a problem". Note which is which.
Record dates, incidents, and who reported them. Time-stamped. By the person who saw it, where possible.
Assume any note may later be disclosed. Internal email, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, handwritten meeting notes — disclosable in a tribunal, a regulatory enquiry or a civil claim. Write accordingly. There is rarely a good reason to put speculation in writing.

This is not a substitute for legal advice on the firm's specific record-keeping duties. It is the operational habit a calm HR function adopts as a matter of course.

The legal frame

The page names the statutes and concepts that almost always sit underneath the decision. It does not give advice on any of them. Take the names to an employment lawyer.

Equality Act 2010. Addiction to alcohol is excluded from the protected characteristic of disability (Schedule 1, Para 1, Reg 3 of the Equality Act 2010 (Disability) Regulations 2010). However, conditions caused by the addiction — liver disease, depression, anxiety — can themselves be disabilities. The exclusion is narrower than people assume.
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Section 2 covers the duty to colleagues. Section 3 covers the duty to people not employed by the firm — clients, members of the public. An employee impaired at work who harms a third party can put the firm in scope.
Capability vs. conduct. The same behaviour — missed deadlines, slurred speech in a meeting, a missed flight — can be framed as a capability matter, which leads to support, occupational health and possible adjustment, or a conduct matter, which leads to a disciplinary process. How the matter is framed in the first 24 hours often shapes everything that follows. It is rarely a neutral choice.
Suspension is a holding move, not a verdict. It buys the firm time to investigate without the employee being at work. It is also visible to colleagues and is therefore a reputation event in its own right. ACAS guidance on suspension applies.

One sentence in plain English: these sit on the same desk at the same time. An employment lawyer will help you decide which one is the right starting point for this case.

The clinical frame

A senior employee with a suspected alcohol problem is rarely the right person to assess their own drinking, and the firm is not the right body to do it either. Independent clinical assessment exists for this — usually a one-to-one consultation with an addiction physician or psychiatrist, paid for by the firm or the employee, that produces a written opinion the firm can act on without being accused of acting on rumour.

Examples of providers who do this kind of independent assessment in the UK include UKAT, Castle Craig, the Priory and Smarmore Castle. The point is not the brand. The point is that an independent clinical opinion can move the conversation from suspicion to evidence.

A consultation of this kind commonly starts around £400 depending on the provider. A residential admission, if it follows, is a separate question with its own cost band.

The treatment frame

If the employee accepts that they have a problem, the firm has a narrow set of options:

Time off for treatment. Residential rehab is usually 28 days. Outpatient is longer and cheaper.
Who pays. The firm, the employee, private medical insurance — sometimes; most policies have alcohol exclusions or sub-limits — or a partnership drawing.
Return-to-work. Phased, supervised, with or without random testing, with or without role change. The terms are negotiated, not standard.
Confidentiality inside the firm. Almost always imperfect. People notice 28 days of absence.

This page does not negotiate any of those for the firm. It names them so the right person can.

If the firm is paying for the admission and wants an independent shortlist before instructing, the Clinic Compare Brief is the cold-state equivalent of this page. £149 introductory, 72 hours, three to five UK clinics compared specifically against the employee's situation. Same independence rules: no broker fees, no commission, no clinic placement money.

When others may need to be told

Some of the duties on this desk are internal. A handful are external, time-bound, and not optional. The reportable thresholds people most often forget:

FCA SMCR (financial services). Senior Manager fitness and propriety. SMF holders. Conduct rule breaches by certified staff. Regulatory references on exit. Notification windows are short.
SRA (solicitors). Duty to report serious breaches. Duty of candour. The regulator's view of alcohol problems in fee-earners has shifted in the last five years and is no longer purely punitive, but the notification duty has not gone away.
GMC (doctors), GDC (dentists), other professional regulators. Health procedures exist. They are slow and not always kind, but they exist, and the duty to refer rests with the firm as well as the practitioner.
Professional Indemnity insurer. Most PI policies require notification of a "circumstance which may give rise to a claim". An impaired senior employee with client-facing work is often that circumstance. Late notification can void cover. Read the policy before assuming silence is safe.
Audit committee / non-executive directors. Often have a standing right to be told about events involving senior people. A failure to brief them can become its own governance issue.

If any of these apply, the lawyer call is not optional and it is not next week.

The reputation frame

The reputation calculation — separate from the regulatory duties above — is the one HR cannot make alone. It usually involves the GC, the Managing Partner or CEO, sometimes the comms team, sometimes the board. There is no checklist for it. There is only the question of who in the firm has the standing to make it, and whether they have been told.

If they have not been told yet, that is the next call.

What this page won't do

It will not tell you whether to suspend.
It will not tell you whether to notify a regulator.
It will not write the letter to the employee.
It will not make the call to the partners' room.
It will give you the moving parts on one page, in plain English, in twenty minutes, so the calls you do make are made with the picture in front of you.

If you want to talk this through privately before any internal call, the bot is £49, one-off, no account, no record kept after the session. It will not give you legal advice. It will help you organise the moving parts before the internal conversation — including the regulator question, the PI insurer question, and how the first 24 hours of framing tend to shape what follows.

Open a private session — £49

No account. No record kept. Plain English.

£295 · Application only · 8–12 page PDF · Five working days

Confidential Containment Brief

A senior executive is drinking. You have been told.
You have a duty of care, a regulatory threshold, and a reputation to manage.
This is the written reconciliation: one briefing, three tracks, five days.
Independent, confidential containment for the firm's leadership.

The £49 bot session above frames the next 72 hours and is the right product for most firms. For partnerships and HNW firms that need the same reconciliation work as a written, signed PDF — confidential, on letterhead, suitable for the partnership file or instructed counsel — the £295 Confidential Containment Brief is application-only.

One firm, one affected party, one document. 8–12 pages. Five working days from acceptance. No retainer, no commission, no white-label arrangement with any EAP, insurer or law firm. Independence is the product.

Every brief carries a Page 1 validity header naming the date of preparation and stating that the brief expires as a basis for action ninety days from that date. There is no renewal product, no refresh tier, no annual subscription. The expiry is structural protection for both parties; if the matter persists past the window, the firm instructs fresh advice.

Sample brief — redacted

An anonymised but realistic fact pattern: Tier-1 City law firm, Equity Partner, alcohol pattern visible to junior staff, regulator named generically as the firm's regulator. Watermarked SAMPLE on every page. Source notes redacted to category. Real briefs name the regulator, threshold and citation directly.

Download the sample (PDF, 11 pages)

What this brief is, and is not

It is the written reconciliation between the firm's regulatory duty, disciplinary process, and clinical duty of care, on one PDF, with named hand-offs and a five-or-six-step sequence for the next 30 days.
It is not legal advice, clinical advice, HR advice, or crisis communications. It is the operational map that lets instructed counsel, OH and the partnership work from the same picture.
It will be declined and refunded before money changes hands if the affected party is in acute clinical risk; if the firm is asking the brief to ratify a decision already taken; if the matter is in active litigation; if the buyer is the affected party presented as the firm; or if the regulator has already been notified and the timeline is operational hours, not days. Expect a decline rate of 40–50%.

Apply for a Containment Brief — £295

James reads every application personally within one working day. Successful applicants receive a Stripe Payment Link; declined applications receive a written decline-and-route note that names the network's £49 bot, NHS lines if acute, the firm's own occupational health provider and the firm's instructed counsel — no named private clinical units, by independence policy.

1. Firm name

Sector e.g. law, finance, professional services, family office

Employee count band

Regulator

2. Your name

Corporate email Used to verify role before issuing payment link.

Your role

3. The affected party's role e.g. Equity Partner, MD, Head of Desk, Senior Counsel, C-suite

4. What the firm has noticed, and when Three or four sentences. The most important answer in the form.

5. Regulator notification status

6. Occupational health

7. What does the firm need this brief to do? Optional. Examples: give the partnership a defensible position before Friday's meeting; resolve the conflict between disciplinary and duty-of-care tracks; frame the conversation with the regulator before notification.

8. Anything else James should know Optional.

9. Conflict-of-Interest Negative Check Optional. Are there any clinics, EAPs, insurers, OH providers, law firms, or other advisers the firm would prefer the brief did not name or recommend, on commercial-relationship or reputational grounds the firm does not need to disclose? The brief honours the list without asking why.

10. Formal Declaration of No Prior Relationship Optional. Are there any individuals or entities with whom the firm requires a formal written declaration of no prior commercial, advisory, or personal relationship before the brief is accepted? If named, the network issues a signed declaration on letterhead before the engagement opens. The declaration is bounded to the entities listed; the network does not warrant relationships it has not been asked about.

Application reviewed by James Roberts within one working day. Your details go to one mailbox: [email protected]. No marketing list, no CRM. Privacy.

Author: James Roberts. Independent. No referral fees. No financial interest in any treatment provider, broker, insurer, EAP, or law firm. Same independence rules as Clinic Compare and editorial standards.