Performance & Termination

What do you do when no one wants to complete appraisals?

gi_janearng — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:31:42 GMT

Specifically, when it's the senior management not doing them. I feel it's a time management issue. I have sent out overdue notice after notice and even CCed our President trying to get him involved but...nothing. They are only receiving more every month and there's no reason when a good majority of their employees are working in the same office as they are.

Employees posting their resumes...

mmbland — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:28:50 GMT

My company wants me to implement a policy stating that we will not tolerate employees putting their resume online. Can we discipline employees for this? Is this legal? I don't agree with this but the boss is very adamant about this. He feels that if employees are looking for another job they won't be committed to this job. Does anyone out there know if other companys do this or not?

Plant Employee Indicted for Home Invasion/Assault/Armed Robbery - Can we term?

new2hr — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:52:20 GMT

We have an employee who was hired on a temporary 90 day probabtionary period and was recently indicted for assualt/armed robbery. He is out on bail right now. Our thoughts are obviously for the safety of our other employees and we wish to terminate his employment, which is "at will". However, say he is not convicted of the felony. Would there be any legal action that could be taken against the company for wrongful termination?

Thanks a bunch!

Chronic illness causing absences by employee not covered under FMLA .

indhr01 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:47:44 GMT

An employee is missing more and moreworkdays due to her having MS. The organization only has 41 employees so doesnot meet the threshold for FMLA. If the attendance policy is followed, she willbe terminated. We would like to be kind to her but her absences are impactingother employees who must pick up her workload. What options, if any might weconsider other than termination based on the attendance/disciplinary policy?

How does unpaid Administrative leave effect new hire healthcare enrollment?

confy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:07:06 GMT

After 2 weeks of employment we placed a new hire on involuntary "administrative" unpaid leave to restest for a drug screening.

Employee was hired and working before "pre-employment" drug screening. We then did the "pre" employment screening, and put him on unpaid leave for two weeks and terminated him at the end if the leave.

It was during those two weeks that he would have become eligible for medical benefits. As we knew we were going to termintate him, we told the healthcare provider NOT to initiate his enrollment. We then sent the employee a termination letter backdating his termination date by two weeks to the date unpaid leave began.

Can we set the termination date back to last "paid" workday?

Can we deny medical benefits because we placed him on leave right before activation date?

thanks

Thanks

Performance Appraisal Rater Biases

bebarrick — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:46:45 GMT

I have been asked to research some ways that we as a company can eliminate performance appraisal rater biases. We are in the process of using performance appraisals to determine raises and bonuses for our employees. One issue we face is that of rater biases. We have a number of different offices and different managers conducting appraisals. I would be very appreciative for information anyone can send me.

Thank you in advance.

Employee Evaluation Software

SubGrapHR — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:25:06 GMT

Good afternoon all-

I was hoping that some of you could share your insight and recommendations on good evaluation software that you have used in the past. One big area of concern is the ease of use and currently we are operating in the "stone age" with paper checklist format. Your assistance is much appreciated.

Performance Management Issues

HR01 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:48:24 GMT

I have several dilemmas...(same manager/company for all situations)

1) A mid-size manufacturing organization is having trouble getting line-managers/supervisors to support the organization's performance appraisal system. Most of the managers and employees see the performance appraisal process as an HR requirement, opposed to a transformational tool. Also, the current performance appraisal system is being used inconsistently across the company's three divisions (all under the leadership of the same manager). We are trying to get buy-in from the managers and employees.

2) The manager is struggling to engage several employees whom are over 60 years old. The company doesn't have a succession plan so they want to encourage the more experienced workers to become mentors to the younger workforce before they retire. However, the older workers are resistant to change and are only focused on doing the job that they know.

3) The company is in constant "firefighting mode" and has an "old school" management style.

4) There is high overtime and high downtime in the production area.

Do you have any suggestions? We are really looking for performance models to reference and/or best practices of mid-size manufacturing firms.

Retaliation and abuse of power questions (IT worker - Florida)

HRstudies — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:51:50 GMT

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I have several dilemmas that I would appreciate your help with. This is about the case of a senior IT employee at a mid-size (50+ employees) corporation in Florida:

1) The employee is receiving excessive write-ups and complaints by her supervisor after she raised a concern that she was misclassified as exempt under FLSA and asked for overtime wages.

2) These complaints are distributed among several individuals at the company, including the owners and partners who are not direct supervisors or part of the HR department.

3) The employee is frequently asked to perform personal errands for her bosses or her bosses' family, girlfriends, friends, etc, (for example, fixing their personal computers and networks).

4) She was written up for a day during which: she took 3 hours off but worked between 7 am and 2:30 pm, and 5:30 pm -12 am. The employee notified the HR department about the 3-hr absence (2:30-5:30 pm) and they forwarded the notice to the employee's supervisor by email. The supervisor is writing her up for not informing him directly. The company doesn't specify who to notify in the event of absence. The employee had sufficient sick and vacation leave accrued to cover the 3 hours. Additionally, this was a regular work day, not a double shift. The employee regularly works multiple additional hours on weekends, and before and after business hours.

5) The company's owners requested work from the employee during her vacation, which she performed, and the company did not refund the hours to her accrued vacation bank.

6) The company is considering eliminating the employee's position and outsourcing her job as a way to get rid of her. This seems to be a regular practice. On at least 3 other occasions, the company laid off personnel by announcing a position redundancy and then shortly thereafter, renamed the position (with essentially the same duties) and hired someone new.

What options does this IT employee have? Does the employer's behavior qualify as retaliation, abuse of power, or other actionable conduct? Your advice will be much appreciated.

Thank you very much!

internet usage and social networking

jodijrl33 — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:28:04 GMT

An employee is using the internet at work to access social web sites (myspace and facebook). Can the application on Myspace Texas Hold Em be considered as gambling? Also this employee downloaded Limewire which allows downloading of music and a file of was made for his personal pictures. Standard policies are used. Employee is also under union contract. What steps of corrective/disciplinary action should be next after verbal warning?

Evaluations

hbarnes — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:51:10 GMT

Does anyone know of a good evaluations form that I could use? I'm trying ot find one that is like a 360 perfromance review.

Poor Performance Probation Template

HR Lady — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:42:42 GMT

Does anyone have a viable template that I could use? Need ASAP.

Severance Policy/Relocation Policy

MNHR952 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:02:10 GMT

We are a company of 200 employees in the Midwest; 200 Million in sales. We are in the process of developing a severance and relocation policy. Does anyone have any policies they would be willing to share to help us develop ours and makes sure we are not missing anything.

Thank you in advance.

Clock in times abuse

heatherv — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:46:55 GMT

We have a highly compensated employee that manager ment does not want to work 40 hours so they let him come and go as he pleases. He has a schedule but does not follow it. He comes in early or late without notice and takes however long lunch he wants. He does stay until the last person leaves for the night. I feel powerless to do or say anything to management about this employee. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Does a reoccuring illness exempt employees from the attendance policy?

6364961 — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:46:20 GMT

I was handed the HR responsibilities due to a downsizing a couple of years ago and have been learning on the fly ever since. Hopefully some of you senior HR professionals can lend me some advice on a particlar issue I am predicting may end up causing my organization (and me) some headache.

One of our employees has been repeatedly ill over the past year. Each instance has been due to the same health condition. He will be out anywhere from a day to multiple weeks. This employee continues to see numerous physicians and specialists and always supplies us with the appropriate documentation clearing him to come back to work. However, there are two problems:

1. He has been provided FMLA paperwork on at least two occasions and has never had them completed and returned. His wife is a HR professional with another organization. She has an abrasive personality and acts as his representative when he is not at work. Together they submitted in writing a request that they would like his medical leave to be considered under FMLA. At that time the employee was sent the 'certification of health care provider for employee's serious health condition" form with written instructions that if sufficent information was not provided within the next 15 days the leave may be denied. The form was never returned.

2. Whenever this employee is off with an unscheduled absence he has yet to notify his supervisor in a timely manner according to our attendance policy. To complicate things further we work for a hospital and this employee is simply showing up at the emergency room for treatment or if he begins feeling ill while at work will notify his supervisor he is going to the ER and never report back, relying on the ER nurse to notify his supervisor. By policy an absence due to illness is considered unexcused if the employee fails to notify their supervisor at least two hours prior to the start of their shift. Most of the time the employee does not notify the supervisor until his shift is scheduled to start and will simply say he is in the ER seeking treatment and wont be able to work. He has received both verbal and written warnings concerning his failure to properly notify his supervisor of an absence.

I see the writing on the wall, this employee will likely continue the same pattern which will force me to apply additional disciplinary action, probably termination. Am I setting myself up for an ADA complaint?

The difference between a verbal and written warning?

gi_janearng — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:56:51 GMT

When it's documented, that is. It's been recommended to us that we document a verbal warning and place it in the personnel file, but I guess I'm having a hard time grasping how a documented verbal warning is different from a written warning. What do you put in a written warning that is not included in a documented verbal warning?

Extensive absenteeism / mental health concerns

mzihc — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:33:20 GMT

Help again. Me –the “not HR” HR person.

We are located in California and have less than 50 employees.

I have an employee that had a close relative die. She has been experiencing what she admits is bouts of depression and states she is seeing a therapist. Also said that she had been prescribed something that had helped but stopped taking it because she didn’t like how it made her feel. (Information passed through her manager. However no supporting documents provided or requested to date. We have no reason to doubt the validity of it.)

The death occurred about two months ago prior to my return to work from an extended leave. The information provided to me has been somewhat sketchy but apparently during the period of time immediately following the death she began missing an extensive amount of time on a consistent basis. Much of this time was without notification to the company. It is my understanding at one point after not being to reach the employee for x amount of days (more than the handbook referenced 3 days) when she had been expected back to work that we actually considered sending a job abandonment notice. She ended up being out for about a month. Again, in my absence I do not believe any sort of agreed upon leave of absence had been discussed, etc. There was almost no interaction with the employee during this time and nothing official. I returned to work and was told she was expected back also and we were waiting to see if she showed up.

She did and for a short period of time was attempting to come in each day – it lasted for almost two weeks. She has begun missing work again, and most the time with barely any notice. She was expected in today after missing 3 days last week and (1) emailed to say she would be in late then (2) texted her manager to say she couldn’t get out of bed.

The company has been more than understanding and extremely lenient (to our detriment in my opinion.) Her manager has not wanted to pursue any disciplinary action to date but with the latest round of absenteeism and the burden it is placing on her/her team we need to start the process to either have the employee make corrective action or leading to her termination.

As we put off doing anything about this for so long I am looking for some guidance. I am suggesting a meeting tomorrow where she will either be given an initial verbal or written disciplinary action form. Recommendation on one or the other?

Based on the employee’s mental state and prior attitudes, I believe there is a good chance that this may not go well. I think there’s as good of a chance that she will walk off the job as there is that she will quietly acknowledge the problem & promise to work on it.

If we follow a set documented procedure where we specify the corrective action needed and our expectations, and follow-up if this is not met, are there any other ramifications to consider? I.E. her mental state – we do not believe we are being discriminatory. She also has not actually provided any doctor notes for anything or requested leave. Due to the size of her department and the prior time off I’m not sure her manager/department head would be willing to grant a leave of absence. In addition, I think this is actually being brought to a head because of the absenteeism/illness of another departmental employee. Small call support department is now down to three from five and it is not enough to cover the hours of operation. However this was an issue that was going to need to be dealt with soon without the other employee’s illness.

And if she does end up with a doctors note? It is placing a burden on our small company but then do we open ourselves up for an issue since we now have the 2nd person in the department on a doctor's leave (medical) ? The same absences issue hasn't been there for him but recently did start having more absences as he was ill.

Any suggestions or comments or things I should be aware of?

As a postscript. We do like the employee and would like to keep her. We are concerned for her mental health and on non-official basis made suggestions - like continuing with the meds if they were helping. We've invested a year in her training so far and would probably have to start over with a new hire.

Exit interviews

officerj — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:55:57 GMT

Want to start conducting exit interviews and looking for sucessful-proven methods.

Send paper questionnaire to home address before they term or after they term?

Conduct in person or via phone, before or after term?

Contact all terminations or just those who gave notice?

Any "good" questions? Or any examples you could share?

hr@rjss.com

We are retail with high turnover and most employees do not have company email access so its snail mail or phone calls.

Thank you!

Not accepting notice period

PHS09 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:05:37 GMT

An employee of ours resigned and gave 30 days notice. However, due to the nature of his position and the security of the firm we decided we would not need the notice length he gave and accepted the resignation on the spot. I understand this turns the resignation in to a termination. We sent the final check out in the time needed (he doesn't work at our headquarters) but he was never around to receive the package. Are we going to have trouble about not getting the final pay to him in the time allotted because he was not around to accept it? What do we do if or when it gets returned to us??

Employee declines new position

lashefHR — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:54:51 GMT

We have a job share team where we terminated one of the employees. The other employee was offered a full-time position, but is declining the position. Is she terminated or is she resigning from the job?

No Call No Contact No Notice Policy

6238872 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:55:10 GMT

I am trying to find a sample policy on "No Call, No Contact, No Notice" which I used to have with a prior employer. Basically, if you are scheduled for a shift and did not call, contact or give notice to anyone to that affect, it was considered job abandonment and you could be separated from employment. Does anyone know of or have a sample policy of this sort available? We recently separated a team member who failed to show up for work and did not call to give notice that she would not be in--she did this twice in 2 weeks, so we separated her. It is not clearly addressed in basic attendance policies, so we would like a separate policy for this. Any help is appreciated.

HR Manager

Ophthalmology practice

How to deal with a high-performing employee who wants to take a long vacation?

mikeerdas — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:46:39 GMT

How does one, and should one, accommodate a high-performing employee with a strong work ethic who asks to take a "trip of a lifetime"--a long vacation lasting ~3-4 weeks? Is it something to seriously consider granting if the employee has accrued the time? What issues are involved?

Thanks.

Mike

Exempt Employee suspension

6304153 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:18:15 GMT

I have been asked to write a policy on our supervisor's for disciplinary purposes to include verbal, written, and eventually suspension without pay. They are tax exempt employees's of our company, but I am confused about the guidelines I am reading. We are based in WV and I cannot find anything specifically for our state. For what causes can we suspend wtihout pay and for what lengths of time. Can we use continuing performance issues as one?

Dress Code - Uniforms

carolesm1 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:18:34 GMT

The Minimum Wage article from the Governor in CA that was last revised in 1/2008 states the following:

The term "uniform" includes wearing apparel and accessories of distinctive design or color. Ordinary work clothes are not considered uniforms when the employees have free choice of what to wear. When the employer specifies the design or color or requires that an insignia be affixed, it is considered a uniform.

We are putting together a new Dress Code where we are requiring employees to wear the following:

Approved blue tops (found at Macy's or Dress Barn) are acceptable; Blouses and shirts may be long or short sleeved, with or without a collar, in white or cream, solid colors only.

Pants or skirts must be in solid navy or black colors only; Skirts should be no shorter than two inches above the knee; Skirt slits should be no more than two inches above the knee.

Blazers and Jacket must be in solid navy or black color only and must compliment pants/skirts in material and color; No patters or ornamentations are allowed.

Because we have specific requirements, does this count as a "uniform" or just street clothes as there are no company logos involved? If a uniform, are we as the employer responsible for giving our employees a Uniform allowance to purchase these items and to maintain them?

Any suggestions?

Termination without cause (sort of)

PHS09 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:07:26 GMT

I have an employee who's dept/program has switched supervision about 60 days ago. This happened about the same time that we were beginning our performance reviews. The employee receives an average performance review from his previous supervisor. The new supervisor does not believe that is accurate and feels that this employee is a poor performer and not playing by his rules. Although I have been told that this employee has been spoken to about performance I have not received anything in writing about the issues. Now the supervisor is ready to fire him. But wants to fire him without cause. The approach he wants to take is to say there is no longer a need for his position. I don't think this is going to go over well and is going to be very difficult to explain that their is no longer a need for his position and that the supervisor does not want him in any position. I don't think that there is a legal issue here but wanted to see if any one else sees any potential legal concern or other concerns. I think there is going to be some upset amongst a few employees who work in the same office with him.