Control over off-duty time?

NG in LA

I am the HR Manager of a public entity. Recently, I was contacted by a non-employee that one of our employees came to her place of business and acted inappropriately towards her (in a sexual manner). On talking to our employee it became a "he said, she said" situation. Our employee claims he was on his lunch hour (the time of the alleged incident would confirm this) and that the allegations are untrue. He was wearing our uniform at the time. We have no policy that addresses the situation. My question is, how much control/responsibility do I have over an off-duty employee's actions?

deniseE

If you don't have a policy detailing appropriate behavior this might be a good time to adopt one. Overall you don't have a whole lot of control about what ee's do apart from the company...but in this case the ee was allegedly in uniform...I can see where that would raise concern. Additionally, so far you have only allegations, and regardless of the policy, I think you would need a court disposition (that demonstrated a violation of co. policy) for this to be a lawful termination based upon her actions.

marc

We have a policy that basically says if your actions cause harm to our agency, you may be subjected to disciplinary action up to and including termination. It does not matter if you are on the clock or not. I would think that wearing the uniform would give a third party the impression that the EE was a company agent. A third party would not know if the EE was on lunch hour or not which leads me to believe it reasonable to assume the EE is an agent of the company.

If you have a sexual harassment policy, examine it with respect to third party encounters, you might find it mentioned therein. One of the concepts of harassment is not whether or not sexual harassment occurred, but whether or not the victim perceived it to have occurred. It is the perception that counts That could be an avenue for a write up for this EE not to engage in conversation that is subject to this type of interpretation. Then you do not have to get into interpreting the "He said, she said" situation.

Shadowfax

I'm with Denise on this - get a policy, make it tough and enforce it. Your policy needs to include the language..anything that e/ee does while in city uniform that causes distrust, embarassment etc will be gounds... If e/ee wants to screw off on his lunch hour, he'd better get out of uniform. I think under these particular circumstances, a judge would not hesitate to agree you have a limited right to control certain outrageous behaviors or behaviors that tend to foster distrust etc in city. While in uniform, for better or worse and whether he likes it or not, he is viewed as the representative of the muni, and he had better represent themuni very carefully.