Employee trying to get fired
 

I'll be seeing my employment attorney tomorrow, but I'm wondering how the brain trust would handle this. I have an employee who I gaven permission to work off-site while she recovered from surgery. Her doctor gave her "no restrictions" on her health status letter, but she says she can't drive to work because of pain. Her production is still through the floor even though she is healthy enough to be working. One week ago demanded that she start working in the office again to get her production back up. She has been here 1 day out of 6 and communicates with anyone else in the office but me when emails or calls (only 4 communications from her in 6 days). I have emailed her and called her and told her she needs to get to work, but she ignores me and tells my secretary that she's working from home. I'm sure she is trying to tick me off and get fired so she can collect unemployment. I don't want to fire her, I want her to quit so my unemployment premiums don't go up. I'm not sure how to go about this. Any ideas?

Out here you write up an employee for a problem and after 3 write ups you can fire them and they can't collect unemployment. I'm sure your attorney will know a process.

Tough deal... But my gut shot is to give her notice that if she is not performing x by Y date that she will be terminated. After several notices you should be able to can her and fight the unemployment claim. That is where my dad screwed up in firing a guy...


However... If shes not productive and a suck on your time and money.. May be worth paying the claim to get rid of the leech!

Give her a pay cut or reduce her hours below full time and take her benefits away..

Yup, take your time, document, document, document. Patience is your friend. No private conversations with her, always have a witness or two to conversation.

If you write her up and ask her to sign it she may refuse. Ask her to make a note on the write up about what she does not agree with so she can't say later you never gave it to her.

Bingo. It's all about the written notices. She has to sign them to acknowledge receipt. I'm no expert or attorney, (consult one), but my understanding is that there is a difference between "fired for cause" and and just fired or laid off.

No idea on the short run but for long run I'd get in touch with whoever can make Ohio a right-to-work state and vote accordingly.

Fired for cause = no unemployment. As the others said, document the hell out of it. You could also consider disabling her remote access in conjunction with demanding that she work on-site. Not showing up for work is a really easy was to show cause.

I'm no lawyer, I can only tell you what I've done.

What kind of employee has she been up to the point where she went out? Ohio's an at-will state. You can fire her for anything at any time, but if you show cause and an escalation then unemployment goes out the window. The only rub in there would be the 'ilness'. Dont know eactly what her right would be under that, but it sound like she's playing you to fire her so she can come back and play the disability card.

Showing evidence of poor production is enough to go to her and state factually that she appears unable to perform her duties, so - option A - goes on LTD (unpaid) until she gets her act together, or she hits a pre-determiend period of time; or B - seeks employment elsewhere on her own.

Clarifying her duties and responsibilities makes it pretty black and white. Burden of proof would be on here to prove that she's unable to do so, and why she's a protected class. If she can't, then option a/b again.

There's also nothing wrong with putting a mandate in place to her that she must communicate with you, and failure to do so is a fireable offense (did that, it worked...).

$hitheads like this are what forces you to put multiple, detailed, ridiculous HR policies in place.

A few questions:

1) Do you have other employees that work from home exclusively?
2) Do you have quantifiable measures of performance?
3) Does she have a specific measure of performance, in writing?
4) If she were actually performing up to par, would you care if she was working from home?
5) Does your employee handbook, or HR Handbook have any specific details about working from home?
6) Is there some measure that she can point to that shows that she is performing?

I am sure your atty will ask all of these. In my business, I didn't care where people worked from, as long as they performed. If they weren't performing, then there were issues.

Some owners or managers like face time. They want to see the person in the office. Doesn't have anything to do with performance, but has more to do with personal preference. You should make sure you know which one you are before you see and pay for atty fees :)

She could easily find work in D.C.

Can you have a sit down conversation with her?

Even though her doctor gave her a clean bill of health she may still be in pain and the "not being able to drive" may be legit.

Is there anyway you can help her increase her productivity while she works at home?
Ultimately you're her boss so her not responding to you communications is unacceptable but that shouldn't stop you trying harder to help her.

Make her want to quit on her own? Can you give her an unpleasant assignment, not to be punitive but to challenge her skills?

DO NOT do anything that can be perceived as singling her out or discriminatory.

Changing her hours, assignments etc... is a bad move.

If she's smart and doing this intentionally it's exactly what she's looking for.

If she is really an unproductive employee who has checked out you need do nothing more than follow the rules and be patient.

Anything else is just making unnecessary trouble for yourself.

I was fired in late July after a written warning and I was able to collect unemployment. I knew it was coming long before the warning, but knew it was imminent when I got the written warning, which, from its wording, was very obviously dictated to my boss from above. I was given two weeks "dismissal pay", which HR said was not the same as severance. They said severance is only when your position is eliminated. My position was eliminated. They did not replace me and they handed all my accounts off to others. I filed for UI, but, because of vacation and dismissal pay, had to wait a month to collect. I got two weeks of UI before I started a better job.

I always thought if you don't come to work, you have quit...


KT

If you want her at the office? When payday rolls around and her cheque is not direct deposited she will call looking for it. Tell all the staff she needs to talk to you directly about her pay cheque. Have it ready for her but not till she picks it up. If she has no restrictions from her Doctor then she has no reason not to come to work. If she shows up with a new note from the Doctor then have her assessed by the company Doctor or better yet schedule her a visit to the company Doctor before she can show up with a new note.

Thank you all for your input.

Peter - Yes, we made it easy for her to work from home. She's in sales and has a laptop and a company phone. She logged 106 hours in the last pay period (2 weeks) and her phone log shows she spent 47 minutes talking to clients, plus dozens of local calls (friends and family). Her sales are 55% of what they were this time last year.
We had an employee out for 6 weeks after a knee replacement and she worked from home. She called in every day, logged her hours honestly, and got her job done. The contrast between her behavior and this woman is like black and white. She's playing us.

Jeff - right to work has nothing to do with this.

Something similar happened about 10 years ago. A trusted female employee, single, 300+lb, great worker, found "love" and her man started telling her she wasn't paid enough, didn't get respect, worked too hard, etc etc and she went to hell as an employee. This woman, 350+, no love life, good worker, found a man about 3 months ago. The parallels are startling.

that sounds like a winner. cut her hours and pay. send her a letter that sayd she will only get paid for hours worked in the office as of such and such date. if she does not show up, she does not get paid.
cut her down to one day a week in the office

I think the lesson here is obvious......

http://img2.moonbuggy.org/imgstore/fat-chicks.jpg

You guys should get a refresher in HR 101.

Patrick wants to let her go but he does not want her to qualify for UI because she does not deserve it.

Patrick has already allowed the work from home precedent. He will need to deal with that going forward but for this situation the genie is out of the bottle.

In most circumstances you can not just start discriminating against an employee, IE, treat them different from the policies you have either officially set in an employee manual or unofficially set through previous action.

You also can not just cut her pay. This may come as a surprise to some of you but (depending on your states regs) you can be employed, as in go to work 5 days a week for 40 hours a week and qualify for UI if your employer does not pay you for a period of time.

Getting rid of her is as easy as telling her she is terminated but then she applies for UI.

Getting her UI app denied (depending on state regs) could be as simple as telling the Employment Office no but most likely requires documentation.

If you want to get rid of an employee without paying UI or getting sued then follow the process. Provide write up, give 30 days to cure, employee either falls back in line or does not, if they do not then separate.

You don't play games.

Patrick, if you do not have one then I highly recommend you create and distribute an Employee Manual and for future hires make "ability to work in office x days/hours" a condition of employment in their job description or you'll have to deal with this again in the future.

The attorney said what many of you said. Trying to entice her to quit will come back to bite us, there is no alternative to firing her. So we started the countdown per our employee manual today with the verbal warning. Next is the written warning, then suspension, then bye bye and see what her lawyer has to say about it when we dispute her benefit claim. I told her to be sure to bring her phone and computer to our meeting and she "forgot" them at home. She's defiant at every turn. She's gone one way or another.

"She's gone one way or another"
Looks like she never had a chance to change her ways. I would think if you hired someone you would want them to succeed. I don't know HER motivation but wouldn't you first try to get her on track to being a good salesperson.
Best of luck hope you don't get stuck with the unemployment bill.
Mike

Just send her a link to this thread. She will get the message.

We bought her a laptop computer so she could work at home while she convalesced. We allowed her to work at home instead of giving her unpaid medical leave. She ignored instructions to report to the office by phone every day and lied to us about her activities. How can a salesperson who sells over the phone "work" 102 hours and only spend 47 minutes on the phone?
If she was going to succeed she had to put some effort into it and if we were to continue to help her she would have to start being honest with us.

Patrick does not strike me as the type of individual to not give people more than fair shot.

From what I know of him from this board I'd say he's in this situation because he's a good guy and not because he's an *******.

Tell her the office is going "clothing optional"

Threads like this make me glad I'm not in management.

Best of luck Patrick

PS, We had a guy at work have a mental breakdown... I feel bad for him... crying at his desk, hiding in the corner, yelling at people, telling HR that people here at work were ploting to kill him.
He has been out on sick leave for over a month.
We are a seven person shop and losing one guys isn't too bad except that we are open seven days so on Sundays there are only two techs on duty.
My wife is all "why don't they just let him go and hire another tech?"... um... yeah...

what I would do-
wright up a very detailed action plan that sets specific detailed goals for attendance and performance during her next 30 days. this plan would also state that any deviation from the plan would result in immediate dismissal. I would then invite her in for a meeting between her and I with two witnesses where we would discuss her strong points and the problems that have been occurring and go over the action plan in a way that felt as I am wanting her to improve and become a valued employee. then watch her closely and on the first deviation from the plan hand her a check and explain it was her last day-

we had a team member milk medical leave for three years fully knowing he could not perform at the level he did before brain surgury. he would come in and try, but just cause more work for the rest of the team. he was finaly told to just stay home. then a year it took to get him off the books propperly so he could not sue us for wrongfull termination. then we could hire a replacement.

I have been reluctant to step in here as the US laws are different, but you are getting some good advice here. Document and making expectations clear are key, so go through with that and see where it takes you over the short term - I can't improve on the advice others have given you.

But one point....from a guy who is a hatchet man by trade and has fired way too many people in his career....as much as you don't like this person getting unemployment or some other form of unjust enrichment, you may as well just get over it and fire them, let them collect their bit of coin and move on.

Your lost productivity, the impact on your team, the lost productivity when compared to hiring a capable person in almost every case outweighs the penalty incurred for just paying your pound of flesh and moving on.

There is a tendency to focus on the individual in question when in fact the greater liability and detriment to the organization is with the rest of the folks, there is a thing like the survivors complex that people actually look at how so and so was treated and then take time to internalize that (which whacks productivity as people sit around playing "Ain't it awful"), before finally getting on with life again and doing their job.

Plus a fresh face of the right type can be a positive influence....just do a good job at replacement.

Dennis

PS - I have also had a number of times where employees came to me after I toasted someone and said "its about time"

This is pretty much what happened to me. My boss and I worked out a very reasonable and doable action plan to right the ship, although there was no bringing back my two biggest clients, who had simply stopped spending. I had to have so many calls a day and meetings per week, opportunities in the pipeline, etc. He sent me an email to recap the discussion with everything laid out in bullet points, asked me to reply that I concurred. Three days later I got the official write up and everything in the previous email was doubled or tripled, which pretty much meant there was no way to achieve those goals and I needed to be looking for another job. In fact, I was in the barber shop getting a haircut for an interview when that write-up came across on my Blackberry.

Thanks Dennis. It's a sticky situation, and laws here are sketchy on this matter. She was off getting minor leg surgery and now her doctors say she can come to work, but she says she can't. Firing her immediately makes us look callous which is bad for company morale ("You fired me because I was sick!"). Plus it could leave us open to legal action from her. Our employee manual spells out how much sick time a person can have before action is taken and she isn't at the limit yet. But we know she is lying to us about her condition and milking this.
She is dumb enough to post her activities on her Facebook page and we have her phone records. The activities she talks about on facebook and her phone records starkly contradict her claims of her inability to work. For example, she claims she can't drive to work (1 hr commute) but she took a 250 mile drive to visit relatives. During the latest pay period she reported 102 hours of work while only spending 47 minutes on the phone and making only 45% of her sales this time last year when she worked 80 hours, but she was able to make the 250 mile trip and travel 70 miles to watch the Bengals play the Jets. You don't walk up the steps of a football stadium if you are truly suffering from a recent leg surgery.
I hear you about not focusing on the individual. We bent over backwards to help her get through her illness without an impact to her income or productivity and we have been repaid with lies and deceit. It's hard not to take it personally, but I know you are right - we should not.

Employee manuals, signed and documented offenses against same.

Manual should state how many offenses are allowed prior to dismissal.

If she's truly gaming you your employees know more about it than you do so i wouldn't worry about morale being impacted. In fact if anything it is impacted negatively by not taking positive action in this situation. She is laying out a road map for other slackers in your office.