Let's Talk Job Abandonment

When can you legally terminate someone for job abandonment? Is there a reason when you can't? Pandy walks through all the aspects to consider when using the reason of job abandonment for termination. It's not as easy as some think, but a topic well worth the discussion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

Job abandonment. I haven't seen a handbook yet that doesn't have job abandonment in it. And yet I don't think in the gosh, seven years. Um, oh, almost eight years that uh we've been bringing you advice and best practices for human resources, I don't think we've ever talked about job abandonment. And I I just think that's absolutely fascinating. But I did, I had a question come in from a gentleman who said, hey, I've got one of my one of my key supervisors who told us that he was having some issues, yeah, some personal issues, but um, he's dropped off the face of the earth. He's he hasn't come in. We have not talked to him, he, we have not seen him. What we thought was going to be just a couple of days uh of PTO has turned out to now well over two weeks, and we've got a company to run. Is is are we allowed to use the card of job abandonment even with a senior leader? And I thought it was a really unique question because what that told me was this individual's really trying to think hard about number one, do I really want to pull a card of job abandonment? And number two, yeah, am I doing this correctly? So let's talk about job abandonment. Legally, job abandonment has always been understood to be a period of time when an employee just goes on a no-call, no-show point. And and what's interesting is state law has stepped in in many cases and said, look, you either have to have a policy or you don't, depending on the state. And uh one state, like New Jersey, has even said, look, we're not even gonna, you're not even allowed to consider job abandonment until they've been gone for five days. Whereas California or Ohio, they like to see three days, no call, no show. Other states are saying it doesn't matter. If they don't communicate, if they're not coming in to be to work, um, yeah, you have the right to consider job abandonment. But what is consistent when we look at this is that you have to have a policy to say this is how we're going to approach all situations, no matter what the employee does, no matter what level of employee we're we're talking about here. Job abandonment is a no-call, no-show situation where you've just dropped out uh and you're under the radar for this number of days. Now, should that be in your handbook? Absolutely, but I'm still running into companies who don't have a handbook. So think about at least considering that in the these are the kinds of things that we are going to practice as we move forward and be consistent with. But if I give you three major things to think about, a policy is definitely one of them. And it doesn't have to be a big long paragraph uh defining job abandonment, but but it it can be a one-liner under a policy called work rules or uh conduct in the workplace that simply says if we don't hear from you, see you, talk to you, if you just don't show up for whatever you legally can do in that state, three days, we'll consider that a voluntary resignation. And that's something that you seriously should talk to your employees about, especially the demographic that doesn't necessarily feel committed. This individual had a leadership role. He definitely should have felt like communication or should have valued communication more than to just go days without talking to anybody. He didn't check his email. There was just absolutely no sign of life. And we don't expect that from our senior leadership. But our non-exempt workers, our our boots on the ground, the actual workers, yeah, yeah, I can, I see it all the time. So if you're experiencing it, you're not alone. These individuals aren't as committed. They just don't have that level of appreciation for communication. And if they get tired of you, if they get frustrated with you, they're gone. And I've heard some companies say, Well, I got ghosted again. Well, okay, maybe you did. Maybe you did. But do you have a policy that establishes what job abandonment is? The other thing I want you to think really hard about is how are we maybe being proactive about this? You see, um, it was interesting. We did a class here quite uh not so long ago, but it was on reasonable suspicion and and the checklist had a bunch of warning signs at the end. And I thought it was really intriguing because as I was talking to their leadership about that checklist, I said, you know what's interesting is half these warning signs could be indicators of other things going on with your employees. And it may not be that they're going to be, you know, having issues with uh the abuse of alcohol or or drug abuse, that normally is what we exercise reasonable suspicion for. But what about, you know, just losing interest in the company or the just not feeling engaged anymore. So their performance starts dropping off. They're showing up late, they're not volunteering for things. You see, when you've got a good performer that all of a sudden shifts and you see a new person showing up for work, or maybe not as consistently showing up for work any longer, those are warning signs. And inevitably, again, with a certain demographic, a certain commitment to work, those individuals are probably just going to drop off. Why do you allow it to get to that point? The quiet exit doesn't have to be if you can engage and start talking or communicating with that individual early. And if they're giving you all these signals, that brings us to our third point. What is their level of communication? I know that there are some employees who just, you just don't have a chance to even get to know them very well because they're they start and then within a week they're gone. I've heard stories of people coming in and not even making it through training. This is the world that we're living in. This is the workforce you're having to deal with. I hear it all the time. But with that, how are you communicating with them? I had one uh group out of state who got hold of me and said, Well, we terminated somebody because she just she just walked off. I mean, she she she left and we have no idea. And I said, Well, that's interesting because hasn't she, I mean, she she's you you just hired her a couple weeks ago. Why do you think this happened? And it turned out that she and they went ahead and terminated her. I mean, they just took her right off the books. It turned out that she had requested the time off and had that one of the supervisors had signed off, giving her this ability to walk off the job to go to her commitment. And nobody else on senior staff knew about it. So they went ahead and terminated her. And so by the time it got back to me, and I'm in the middle of this investigation, we found a request off form that was properly filled out. We found that the supervisor's signature was exactly where it needed to be, dated. And payroll had even put it into their HRIS system to say, yeah, she'll be off half day. She's taking a PTO day. She's she's got a commitment to go to. So the company had to reverse that. They couldn't say she had abandoned her job. They had to reverse it and bring her back. And trust me, the investigation took me a couple of days because trying to chase everybody down, find the paperwork, go through payroll, it I couldn't do it in an hour. So we owed her back pay because of the inconvenience and the misunderstanding. You see, communication is truly, truly the key that keeps all this going together, whether it's communication of your policy, whether it's the communication of the employee and the employer as they're starting to slide, their interest is waning, and they're they're, you know, inevitably going to leave the company in one way, shape, or form. But what about if it's an emergency? What if we have somebody who's not coming in who just drops off and it turns out that they were in a car accident? Or it turns out that their house burned down and they've had to relocate and they're so caught up with that, or that they've got an emergency with an illness within the family and they've left town. Should they have communicated to you? Yes, but maybe it's just as important for us to try to communicate with them. I cannot tell you how many times I've had a client call me and say, uh, Bandy, we found out that somebody's been incarcerated. Do we have to hold their job for them? They fell off the face of the earth, they went under the radar. But because the employer used the emergency contact form that they had collected at the time of employment, they were able to contact a family member who explained, yes, he hasn't been able to get to a phone. He's been incarcerated. You see, the company can make better decisions if they know exactly what's going on. The employee can feel better about their job if they know what's going on and they know if they're communicating with the company and their employer to say, hey, uh, this is out of my control, or I don't have any choice. I have to go take care of my mother. I have to go and take care of this emergency or this crisis I'm dealing with. There are some situations too where I have to really caution you. That communication requirement goes even deeper when it is a situation where maybe somebody's walked off the job and we want to consider a job abandonment. But it turns out that they're doing so because they didn't feel safe there. The National Labor Relations Board is serious when they say individuals have the right to complain about work conditions. And remember, that includes safety, safety of their equipment, safety of their of their environment. If they were complaining or talking about uh something in the air that that caused that to irritated their sinuses, or um that they felt threatened coming in from the parking lot because of the neighborhood or because of an employee that seems to be a bit hostile. If they feel sexually harassed by a supervisor or another employee to the point where they've made a complaint, but no one's doing anything about it. Yes, they have the right to not come back to work. I wouldn't go back to work if I talked to my employer and said, hey, I need help and nobody's listening to me. So we don't have the right to terminate people on job abandonment if they're truly actually protected by the National Labor Relations Board. And I I caution, I try to explain to companies, look, if somebody's gone under the radar, you have an obligation to find out why. Again, communicate, reach out to them. And and some people you're never gonna, you're never gonna get a hold of. They're just they're gone because they want to be gone. But if you're showing goodwill, if you're showing the best effort, if you're texting them, if you're using the email address that they gave you, if you're calling their cell phone, ultimately, if you're sending them a certified letter, which is what we did with the individual at the beginning of our story, we sent him a certified letter and said, we haven't heard from you. And if we don't hear from you by this certain date, please understand we'll do accept this as a voluntary resignation. We can't hold jobs for people who just go out under the radar. And I get that. But understand that job abandonment does have its rules for both parties, employer and employee. So, as employee, if you're gonna ghost, then expect to be treated as if you're a ghost. You will be fired, terminated, separated for job abandonment if you don't pick up the phone and act like a professional and just say, I don't want to work here anymore. An employer, please understand. It sounds like extra work, yes, but it will pay off. Try to find out if there was something there that we can fix so that somebody else doesn't walk off. We want to know that. And we all have we're a little uncomfortable with it sometimes. But now you've got some things to go by. Hope to see you again.