Sticky Situation

Rockie

Would value some input on the following case in point. A very high level executive assistant was discharged for cause. She has since been in touch by phone with employees still in the office putting her own "spin" on why she is no longer employer. Some of the stories are pure out and out lies such as she was terminated and then made to stay in the office and work for the rest of the day. Simply not true. We only asked her to make a list of anything that she had pending. In fact, it was all I could do to get her out of the door at 6PM. I kept going by her office to see what was taking her so long and she kept saying "I'll be ready in a few minutes."

She has called other people in the office stating other things such as her boss tried to make her do things that were illegal and the reason why he doesn't want to hire a replacement for her position is that he wants to be able to do what he wants to do without anyone knowing what's going on. In other words she is insinuating that he is doing things that are underhanded and illegal.

How would you handle something like this? Is it wise to bring the others in our area that have had contact or have potential contact with her and advise them they should be wary of contributing to job related conversation with her(and/or passing on what she said to other people) or just let it die a natural death?

Should there be an overall guidelines on contact with former employees? I know you can't say to employees that they can't fraternize with former employees but there should be some guidelines on this. This is not the first time that I have realized that sensitive information from our organization has been passed on to former employees. Any suggestions on how to stop it?

Lola815

I would assume that she is bothering your employees so I would definitely talk with everyone. Other than that I don't have any advice. We are having a somewhat similar situation. We have a guy who is on a leave of absense (he's probably going to jail at the end of the month) and he keeps coming in and talking to everyone and trying to get employees to write him letters of reference for his court case, etc. and we talked to all the employees in his building and they were very relieved that we talked to them and told them how we wanted them to handle things.

System

We have had this situation. What we have done (and it seems to work)is to have a labor lawyer draft a letter telling them they can no longer contact employees at work and send it certified to the ex employee.

Sally

We had a similar situation a couple of years ago. The other employees in that department were also relieved when we talked with them about the situation--it was a busy time of year so they could easily say "sorry, too busy to talk right now." The former employee also was sending e-mails to his former supervisor's department head, so--unfortunately--we ended up having our attorney send a certified letter to cease and desist. Haven't heard from the guy since then.

Paul in Cannon Beach

Do you have any sense about how the employees view her critical talk? Is there a trusted employee who you could discuss this with who could give you an idea of whether anyone is falling for her trash talk?

Its possible that everyone sees her for what she is and this will just die a natural death. I give employees a lot of credit for their discernment.

On the other hand, if this continues over time, you might need to take some action. Might be appropriate to consult an attorney at that point.

[email]paulknoch@hotmail.com[/email]

Anita

We had a problem similar to this and what we did was tell all the employees involved that when this person calls them they should transfer the call to me in HR and that I would talk to this person. All our employees were relieved to be told that they didn't have to be bothered by this former employee either at home or at work and once he started getting me each time he called and I told him that he was not to call here anymore and that none of our employees had anything to say he quit calling them both at home and at work.