Her phone was on the table. Then her boss saw the screen
She hit record on her phone. It cost her months of pay.
A managing director at a Singapore PR firm lost her wrongful dismissal claim after a tribunal found that secretly recording a workplace meeting was serious enough misconduct to justify firing her on the spot - even though she had already been given notice and was serving out her final weeks.
The Employment Claims Tribunal dismissed the claim on October 13, 2026, in what it described as the first reported Singapore judgment squarely addressing whether covert recording of an internal company meeting amounts to misconduct warranting summary dismissal - termination without notice.
Three months' notice, then trouble
The worker had been employed as managing director under a contract dated May 21, 2024. On February 23, 2026, the company's president and its fractional chief financial officer and chief human resources officer told her she was being let go without cause. She was offered a choice: serve a three-month notice period or take immediate garden leave with two months' salary.
She chose to work the notice.
Three days later, the employer raised concerns. It issued a warning email and a formal warning letter on February 26 after what it described as a series of post-termination conduct issues: contacting a client without copying the president, attending a business meeting the employer said she should not have attended, and telling a colleague about her departure on his day off.
The warning letter was blunt. Any further misconduct would result in immediate termination without notice and without pay in lieu.
The recording
On March 3, the worker attended a scheduled weekly meeting with the president and the CFO/CHRO. It was a regular business catch-up, though it had been agreed she could also use the time to present her account of the conduct issues raised in the warning.
She brought prepared notes on her phone. She also hit record.
Partway through, while showing a WhatsApp message on her screen in response to one of the warning items, the president noticed the phone was recording and asked her to delete it. The worker said she would, left the phone outside the room and came back in. The meeting ended shortly after. Up to that point, the only matters discussed had related to the worker's responses to the warning.
That afternoon, the employer emailed asking her to pause all work while it reviewed the implications. The next day, March 4, the company issued a show cause letter. It asked whether this was the first time she had recorded a meeting without consent, whether anyone had encouraged her to do it, whether the recording had been shared with anyone, and whether it had been deleted.
She responded on March 5. On March 6, the employer terminated her employment with immediate effect for cause - cutting short a notice period that would otherwise have run until May 22.
What the tribunal found
The worker argued the recording was made only to help her accurately prepare a written response to the warning. She said nothing confidential had been discussed before the recording was discovered, that she had placed her phone openly on the table with no intent to conceal, and that she deleted the recording when asked. She also argued the employer had not conducted a genuine investigation and that the recording was simply a pretext to cut her notice short and avoid paying the remaining salary.
The employer's position was that the covert recording of an internal meeting - regardless of what was ultimately discussed at that particular session - was a fundamental breach of trust. The company was a public relations firm. Clients entrusted it with unpublished and commercially sensitive information. The employer argued that once a senior leader secretly recorded her own management, every conversation that followed would come into doubt.
With no existing Singapore case law directly on point, the tribunal turned to the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal's decision in Phoenix House Limited v Stockman, which set out four factors for assessing whether a covert recording amounts to misconduct serious enough to justify summary dismissal: the purpose of the recording, how blameworthy the employee was, what was recorded or likely to be recorded, and the employer's attitude to such conduct.
The four factors
On what was likely to be recorded, the tribunal found the meeting was one where confidential business information would likely have been discussed. It was a regular weekly management meeting, and handover of the worker's portfolios was still underway as of March 3. That the recording had only captured the worker's responses to the warning before it was discovered did not change the analysis - the meeting was convened for business, and business would likely have followed.
On purpose, the tribunal said it could not make a conclusive finding. The recording had been deleted and no transcript existed. The tribunal also noted the worker had prepared written notes for the meeting, which raised the question of why a recording was also needed if the purpose was to aid her written response.
On blameworthiness, the tribunal accepted this was on the lower end. The worker had never been specifically told not to record. The contract's confidentiality clause did not expressly prohibit recordings, and the employer could not point to any disciplinary policy that did either. The worker did not try to deny or hide what she had done. The tribunal also accepted she was in an emotional state at the time.
But the employer's attitude carried significant weight. The company's initial termination letter had required the worker to delete or destroy any confidential information stored on personal devices. The tribunal accepted the employer's position that a covert recording by a managing director of her own management struck at the heart of the trust the role depended on. In the tribunal's view, some acts are themselves enough to destroy the trust and confidence in an employment relationship, regardless of what the employee intended and even if those intentions were not malicious.
Weighing the factors together, the tribunal found the covert recording justified summary dismissal.
Was the process fair?
The worker also challenged whether the employer had followed a proper process before firing her. She pointed out that only five hours passed between her submitting her response to the show cause letter and the company's internal email recording a decision to terminate. She also highlighted the language of the termination letter, which stated the decision was made "regardless of" her explanations.
The tribunal found the employer had met the standard. The show cause letter clearly set out the allegation. The worker was given the chance to respond - and did. Internal emails showed two separate levels of review before the final decision. The company's HR manager conducted the initial review and sent conclusions to the president on March 5. The president reviewed the summary and the worker's explanation overnight, then confirmed the decision on the morning of March 6.
On the "regardless of" language, the tribunal read the termination letter in full. It acknowledged the worker's explanations about emotional distress and note-taking accuracy but concluded those factors did not sufficiently reduce the seriousness of the conduct. That was the context, the tribunal found - not a sign the employer had made up its mind in advance.
The worker's alternative argument - that the covert recording was a convenient pretext to end her notice early - was also rejected. The tribunal found no concrete evidence to support it.
The claim was dismissed. Each party bore its own costs.
The tribunal stressed its finding was specific to the facts. Covert recordings will not always justify summary dismissal, and the balance of factors may lead to a different outcome in different circumstances.
For HR teams across the region, the decision is a prompt to check whether workplace recording is addressed anywhere in employment contracts, policies, or codes of conduct. The tribunal found misconduct here even without an express recording prohibition - but it also flagged that gap when assessing how blameworthy the employee was. A clear policy removes that ambiguity for both sides.
