When faced with tricky employee relations situations, our clients contact us for guidance to keep them out of legal hot water and to ensure business operations continue to run smoothly. We’ve summarized a few interesting scenarios that our clients have dealt with recently (with a few facts changed to preserve confidentiality) to share some important HR lessons with you.
Case Study 1: Text Message Resignation from Spouse
A Client Service Representative was off work due to a medical issue. While the employee was away on sick leave, her spouse texted her manager indicating that she had tried to commit suicide and that she was resigning because of the state of her health. Should the manager accept the text message resignation from the spouse? How should the manager deal with the vacancy?
Answer: The manager should not accept the resignation for many reasons. First, we have no confirmation that the employee actually wants to resign, as the text message came from the spouse. Second, given that the employee tried to commit suicide, we can reasonably infer that decisions made during this state of health should not be relied on. Third, resignations should be in writing from the employee – a text message from a spouse is not sufficient.
In terms of replacing the employee while on sick leave, the manager is left with a few options: 1) hire a replacement on a temporary basis until the employee is fit enough to return to work; or 2) hire a permanent replacement if the return to work date is uncertain, and offer a comparable position to the employee upon her return to work, provided she can continue to perform her job and has no medical restrictions.
Case Study 2: Job Abandonment
An Engineer was hired to begin work on an important project, with a mutually agreed upon start date. The first day of work came and went, and the employee didn’t report to work. The employee didn’t show up for several days in a row, and the manager hadn’t heard from the new employee. The manager called us to ask whether we would consider this job abandonment?
Answer: No, this is not job abandonment without first understanding the facts surrounding the employee’s no-show. Since he hasn’t started working yet, he may technically not have abandoned his job – we may be looking at nullifying his employment agreement instead. There were many possible scenarios, so we recommended sending a registered letter to his home to outline that he needs to contact the company within a week’s timeframe.
As it turned out, rather than contacting the hiring manager, the employee had emailed a higher level manager that he wanted to change the start date so he could take a vacation prior to starting employment. When he didn’t receive a negative response, he assumed his revised start date was agreed to, and went away on vacation. Upon return from his trip, he showed up for work on what he thought was the agreed to start date. The higher level manager thought he was being informed of the new start date, and didn’t realize that the hiring manager hadn’t been informed.
Case Study 3: Poor performing long-service employee
A long service salesperson used to be a top performer. However, in the last few years, his performance slipped dramatically, and the mistakes made by the salesperson cost the company significantly, both financially and in reduced morale of his co-workers who have to fix his mistakes and deal with the irate customers. The Sales Director had many meetings over the past few years with the salesperson, outlining the performance expectations and where improvement was necessary, and confirmed these in writing. The salesperson has now made another significant mistake – can the employee be fired for cause?
Answer: We offered two possible options to the Sales Director. The first was to give the salesperson one last chance to improve performance over the next 3 months or he would be let go for cause and receive no severance. The second option was to consider the potential cost of another mistake by the salesperson and compare that to the cost of paying out severance. In the end, the cost-benefit analysis tipped over to ending the employment relationship respectfully, and paying the employee the severance outlined in his employment agreement. The potential cost of another mistake made with a client, the reduced morale with co-workers frustrated with their colleague’s performance, and the time and energy required to manage the employee’s performance factored into the decision-making process.
If you are dealing with a delicate employee relations situation and are uncertain as how to proceed, it is recommended to seek the advice of human resources expert or employment lawyer prior to taking action. Please contact us for assistance with your employee relations matters.
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