Unemployment Appeal or FML?
HRQ
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Former employee won Unemployment benefits for "compelling personal reason." Our account will not be charged, however.
My copy of the determination states "You left your job due to your health or hpysical condition. Medical evidence substantiates the necessity of your quitting and you have established you exhausted all alternatives prior to leaving. You left work for a compelling personal reason not attributable to your employer."
No written resignation in employee's file, and on payroll term form, supervisor wrote "Said it was 'time to move on'. She did fulfill her two weeks."
Two months prior to her leaving, employee was written up for refusal to perform a new administrative task. She claimed it was "just too much." Approximately 550 others in similar positions had same task added to their jobs and managed to absorb it. This is a highly regulated task and we monitor it closely. We would know if others were not doing it.
We knew nothing about the health issue mentioned in the determination.
Even though we weren't charged with the benefits, should I appeal? Or send the employee an FML packet? She may qualify, assuming she provided physician's info.
I don't want to hear about this later.
Curious to see what you think.
My copy of the determination states "You left your job due to your health or hpysical condition. Medical evidence substantiates the necessity of your quitting and you have established you exhausted all alternatives prior to leaving. You left work for a compelling personal reason not attributable to your employer."
No written resignation in employee's file, and on payroll term form, supervisor wrote "Said it was 'time to move on'. She did fulfill her two weeks."
Two months prior to her leaving, employee was written up for refusal to perform a new administrative task. She claimed it was "just too much." Approximately 550 others in similar positions had same task added to their jobs and managed to absorb it. This is a highly regulated task and we monitor it closely. We would know if others were not doing it.
We knew nothing about the health issue mentioned in the determination.
Even though we weren't charged with the benefits, should I appeal? Or send the employee an FML packet? She may qualify, assuming she provided physician's info.
I don't want to hear about this later.
Curious to see what you think.
Comments
As to your questions...
The decision to appeal is a difficult one. Even though you are not being charged, she is still getting something fraudulently.
As for the FMLA paperwork, I would not do anything. She gave you a reason for her resignation and going back and going the FMLA route is not necessary.
I called the supervisor and confirmed that she truly had no idea the employee had health issues. Asked her to fax me a statement indicating this.
The determination states the employee provided Unemployment office with "medical evidence" that "substantiates the necessity of your quitting."
Employee claimed the job was "just too much" after approx 2 months of complaining about the new administrative duties. Refusal/failure to complete the dutues was the reason for her write up two months prior to her resignation.
So... I'll leave FMLA alone. We definitely had no idea prior to her resignation.
Unemployment received evidence substantiating her medical issue and for that reason she got bene's. It just isn't being charged to us.
I do not believe I will appeal.
I just didn't want this to come back to me later as violation of FML but it does appear we are safe.
Thanks again!
Short of electric shock therapy, I don't know what else to do to get supervisors to get written resignations out of these people.
Seriously. We've fantasized about inventing the remote controlled "shock-o-matic." Every time they do something like accept verbal resignation, or clock someone out just because their shift is over even though the employee is still working, or tell the employee to call payroll because they claimed married/10 on their W-4 and are mad because we didn't take takes out of their check all year, or...
Or I could start making the managers write up the supervisors for failure to get the resignation in writing.
Or mail a letter to the employee saying "this is to confirm you have submitted your voluntary resignation verbally and your last day was 7/13/07. Please advise immediately if you have any questions." Or something like that. And then take the letter, roll it up, and bop the suprvisor on the nose with it.
Sorry, I'm a little snarky. My vacation starts in just a few hours. Your suggestion is absolutely valid and we continually train supervisors on getting the letters but they aren't 100% consistent. I could have skipped my whole tirade and just said that. I appreciate your patience. x;-)
We have one case, and I have written about it where an employee was ill and failed to find a replacement. Long story short, what I got as a story from the direct supervisor and what I finally found through investigation were two entirely different things. The he said/she said can create "Probable Cause" in WI and it is not fun once you get to that point. What does it hurt to send FMLA documents? Once you have done your investigation of sorts, by calling the supervisor and getting all the information, like WHY the supervisor didn't take a written note, then decide if you will send the FMLA docs. In WI the ex ee has something like 30 days from the point of their becoming aware that they were entitled to FML for state filing of a complaint and its like 365 days for the feds and in civil court it's endless, so make sure.
It's tricky. Really make sure you don't need to send the docs. It doesn't hurt to cover yourself.
Good Luck.
The ex ee is now adding onto the complaint that we should have known he had HIV because of his losing wait and having no energy!
It's a Jungle out There!! (Monk Song)
UI is another story. Every state is different. Most recently I worked in SC where an employee was not eligible to draw if they were termed for excessive absences. I now work in NC and they will allow someone to draw if they can substantiate they had medical reasons (not covered by ADA or FMLA) that lead to their frequent absences.
Really makes me ill. How they think they can determine that after the fact is beyond me, but they do. Okay sorry for the rant.
Agree with the other posters, I wouldn't send FML paperwork now. Think that has the potential to open a whole new can of worms. Could be I'm missing the point as can't understand what would be gained by doing this since the individual no longer works for you and you didn't know there was a medical reason they left.
What if they decide to "take FMLA", do you then need to hire them back? Sounds like this is an employee you wouldn't want to return.
We are not currently doing exit interviews. We just don't have the resources. With turnover, we employ around 1,400 people every year and there are only two of us in my department.
We have been looking at online surveying systems though. We are currently testing it with customer surveys.
Around 60% of our employees have access to the internet outside of work, so we'd still need some kind of backup plan, but we need to do something. We do an annual employee survey on paper and we get some pretty useful information, positive and negative. Imagine if we actually surveyed all new hires and all terms!