Sent an employee home today...I am in California
Sheila2008
44 Posts
We sent an ee home today....He has not turned in his timesheets for this past week and we have a policy that they need to be turned in every morning by 8am. When the Feild Supervisor went to the site to talk to the ee, he said that he sent them from his personal email account, so the supervisor asked if he could log on to see if he could resend. When they got to the page to sign in, the ee became irrate, so the FS sent him home. What should be our next procedure? I say we need to call him in tomorrow and discuss what happened and put it in writing for our records???????
Comments
You should definitely document at least for the reason that the employee has violated your policy on reporting hours worked.
Was this person using a company computer? Do you have policies covering private email on company computers or company networks? What about the transmission of company documents through private email?
The employee's line is probably going to be that he didn't want to log in to his private email with his boss watching. I can understand that. And the boss maybe could have avoided hovering until after the email of interest was brought up on the screen. However, the employee with the private email concerns put himself in that position by failing to do what he was supposed to do in the first place.
I will add this question to the couple of questions that TXHRGuy already asked you -
What does your policy say regarding how the employee is supposed to turn in his/her time each day? If there is not specific instructions in your policy I would change the policy to avoid something like this happening again.
Hindsight is 20/20 but I think this situation could have been handled by the manager asking the employee to turn in the time in writing right then and there and then giving a verbal or written warning for not following standard procedures.
It is in our policy to send in your timesheets every morning by 8am, either by fax or email. The ee said that his email has been down for a long time and that he has been using his personal email to send them.....He just doesn't remember how to log in the company's acct. Weve shown him over and over. When the supervisor went to the site to request them the ee became irate, loud and cursing. He was sent home. We sent him an email and a voicemail yesterday to come into the office this morning for a meeting....(he is being terminated due to insubordination and performance issues).....We can not have an ee behaving this way in front of vendors or the clients...anyone for that matter. He also went to jail over last week some time and had his license revoked. We asked him to get us a copy of the letter stating he can drive to and from the job site and he hasn't done that either. He is usually very quite and he is well liked, so his behavior really threw us off. It is as if he is really stressed out from family life or is on drugs. Anyway, he did not come in or call at all this morning. I have his final paycheck, but he has keys and tools that belong to us. I don't know what I am supposed to do...do I mail the check and terminate via a message? I know if he is a no call, no show for 3 days, it would be as if he quit....
Sheila: I always let people abandon their job rather than fire them in absentia. There's nothing to explain to anybody when the employee quits.
Handle the last paycheck the same way you would any other person's last paycheck. Especially since you think this person may have psychological or substance abuse issues that may or may not be coverered by ADA. Worse yet, you may have an obligation to find out if the person's absence is motivated by a need for leave due to a serious health condition if FMLA applies to you. Your own words suggest that you are aware that something is new and different about the employee that indicates a real problem, including potential abuse of alcohol, prescription medication, or illegal drugs. In fact, after you have the job abandonment card in your back pocket, consider with counsel if you want to follow up with the probably former EE to ensure that you have no compliance issues.
There are ways a company can better protect itself about assigned equipment that have been discussed elsewhere, but they all involve things you have to do before the employee blows up and doesn't show up. At this point, it's generally a cost of business loss unless the equipment was valuable enough to merit legal action.