Steps to ensure you can safely call abandonment
What happens if I am unable to make contact with the employee?
Abandonment of employment
Abandonment of employment has quite a narrow legal criteria. See our blog to learn more about when abandonment of employment isn't an option https://blog.myhr.works/employee-led-termination.
In short, to ensure you can safely call abandonment of employment you must be able to demonstrate attempts to make contact with the employee on each day they have been absent from work.
Steps to ensure you can safely call abandonment:
- Check the employee’s employment to double-check the period they can be absent from work before abandonment can be called. This will typically be 3 – 5 days.
- Attempt to contact the employee in question; this is no different from any other contact you may have made when someone hasn’t arrived to work as usual. A simple “Hey, we expected you at work today. Please let us know if you are ok" phone call, followed up with a text message is all you need to do. Also, try a different method of communication as well, e.g. personal email or a private message via social media if your business uses this as a tool to communicate. Make a note of your call in the employees' MyHR person record.
- Repeat attempts to contact the employee on each consecutive day they were expected to work.
- On the third (or fifth) day, attempt to contact the employee. In this message make sure to say "you have now been absent from work without contact for 3 days. Should we not hear from you today, we may consider options for managing this situation, which may include termination of your employment due to abandonment of employment."
What happens if I am unable to make contact with the employee?
If there is no contact, then please put through an Additional request to MyHR to draft an abandonment of employment letter. If the employee makes contact, our team is available to discuss options to manage the situation when the employee returns to work.