Employee Not Showing Up for Work

HRManager

We are a small (15) company and have no written policies, procedures, handbook, etc. We have an employee who stopped showing up for work - if contacted, says she is working at home. Does not call in and will not give us her schedule. Can we consider her no longer working for us? We don't want to fire her because of unemployment benefits. (Did I mention that she is the girl friend of one of our two owners. The owners are in the process of disolving the partnership and one of them is rarely here. Help.

Titilayo Akodu

First of all you need to create a personnel policy handbook for your company taht will guide all employees. Who give her the permision to work at home. If she cannot provide any valid or legitimate documentation, please terminate her. Policy or no policy, you have the righ to terminate any employee that do fail to report to work without proper authorization. Bring this to the attension of the other partner before you take any action. Good luck.

Theresa Gegen TX

If you don't want to fire her right now, you need to call her in, let her know that working at home is not acceptable. I would give her a written warning to that effect.

If she is not giving you her hours, how is she getting paid (you still have to pay an employee for all hours worked)?

Since she tells you she is working at home, and you never warn her that she has to come in, the employment commission in her state might find that she was fired anyway and give her unemployment.

Basically, the company just needs to start managing the employee, rather than letting her manage the company.

Even if you only have 15 employees, you have enough that most employment laws will apply to your company (for example Title VII). So you need to consider getting policies in place.

Good Luck!!

WOCO Frank

Don't miss the bigger issue here, which is the relationship between the employee and the owner. This raises all sorts of problems - sexual harassment, etc. I would work on bringing that aspect under control before I thought of terminating anyone.

Gar

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Sounds like a sticky situation but, love affair notwithstanding, this should be a breeze. First, find out if she was authorized to work at home. If not, send her a series of registered letters over the course of 3 or 4 days warning her that if she doesn't show up for work by a certain date, your firm will consider her as abandoning her job and her employment will be terminated accordingly. Don't call her on the phone. Been there, done that and it didn't work. Besides, the letters are your documentation that you acted reasonably. Here in NC, job abandonment means no unemployment benefits.