Hiring of employees

jferret

We have extended an offer to a Charge RN for full time evenings. After extending the offer one of our employees came forth and said she worked with the individual at another facility and she was an excellent RN but had a drinking problem and was fired from the facility. The new RN we hired called our employee at home and asked her not to say anything about her problem and the fact that she was fired for drinking on the job. We did reference checks on her and they came back good. No mention of her being fired. She has not started working as of yet. How do we go about telling her we are withdrawing our offer without revealing what our employee said? We are a long term care community with a 30 bed health center and with this type of community our residents are very involved. Legally what can we say and do?

Theresa Gegen TX

Honesty is always a good policy.

Here, I am assuming that she lied on her application (most applications ask reason for leaving job), and then tried to involve another employee is covering up her lie.

That is a good, legal, and justificable reason to withdraw an offer.

Some made up reason could get the facility in hot water with a lawsuit or such, because the employee will think "that reason doesn't make any sense, there must be another reason, and it might be unlawful discrimination".

Be honest with the applicant.

As far as what you tell the residents or others, just say that it is confidential under your company policies and you can't talk about it.

Good Luck!

cthr

If her reference checks came back good and no one said that she was fired from her former employer, I would not take just your employees word for it. Does your facility drug and alcohol screen before employment? I would check with your attorney before rescinding the offer.

SMace

She may not have lied on her application. What if they allowed her to resign and that's what she put. If she received treatment for a drinking problem she is covered by ADA. You can't take an adverse action (rescinding offer) because she had a past drinking problem. You could if she lied on her application and that is your standard practice. Just because someone had a drinking problem in the past does not mean they can't be an excellent employee in the future. Tread carefully.

Stephen