Abandonment of Employment

So your business has had an employee that has not turned up for work without contacting you and you are unable to reach them, what should you do??How long should you continue to try to contact them?

Unfortunately, On Demand HR has had to assist our clients with this type of situation in the past and we have developed a rough rule of thumb plan 4 step plan which we are going to share with you today.?Of course, every situation is different which will impact this process such as the length of service of the employee.??

Please feel free to reach out to us by visiting?www.ondemandhr.com.au?should you wish to have a no-obligation discussion about a situation facing your business.

So step 1 of the process is to naturally try to make contact with the employee ASAP.?Try any form of communication that you can to elicit a response including phone calls, email, SMS or any other way in which you traditionally communicate with your employees – I know some businesses still use Facebook!

On Day 2 if there has been no response (please keep in mind, we are always referring to business days here), we would recommend sending a letter formally requesting the employee to contact the business within 24 hours.?Depending on the situation, this letter may include a warning that should the employee not respond within the requested 24 hours, their employment will be considered terminated by means of abandonment.?

Day 3, again business day, is awaiting for a response from the employee

We have discussed this in detail internally and in most cases, we would be comfortable issuing a termination letter on the morning of the 4th?business day.

Of course, there are an infinite amount of variables that could occur with this process.?We often get questions such as “what constitutes a response?” to prevent sending the termination letter.?The truth is that this is going to vary on a case-by-case basis and we encourage you to reach out to us so that we can help you navigate through the situation facing your business.