What should you do if an employee walks out of work without serving notice?

Transcript

Hello and welcome. I'm Kirsty Beatt, an HR Manager at EPM. Within this blog, I will be discussing an HR matter that may occur within your workplace. So let's set the scene. You have an employee in your School who hands in their written notice one afternoon, but then doesn't show up to work the following morning, despite having a four-week notice period. Best efforts had been made to contact the employee, by telephone, email, and their next-of-kin. Though, no response is received.

So what actions should you take?

Step 1:

Firstly, check the employee's contract to see if there are any clauses that cover failure to work notice periods. Check to see whether or not working the notice period allows you to deduct holiday pay, or charge the additional cost of covering the employee's notice period with a temporary worker or another employee.

Step 2:

Accept the employee's notice, in writing and clearly communicate your plans due to them not working their notice period. Where monies are being withheld, the employee should be notified in writing in advance. For instance, you may wish to consider:

• Withholding pay for the notice period due to non-attendance at work
• Reducing contractual holiday pay to statutory holiday pay.

Step 3:

If you wanted to, you could sue the employee for breach of contract. However, this can be costly and time-consuming, so you will need to determine whether this is worth considering.

If, for instance, the employee in question is a Trustee at your School and is contracted to serve a six-month notice period, it might be worth doing. However, you can only sue for losses arising from the breach, which might be difficult to quantify. Bearing in mind you will have already saved six months' pay to offset any losses.

To determine the best option for the specific circumstance, please refer to your current notice period policies.

Step 4:

If the employee makes a complaint directly before they hand in their notice and subsequently walks out, for example in relation to sexual harassment, we would always recommend you deal with the complaint using your normal grievance procedure.

Step 5:

If they have walked out, there's a good chance the employee in question may be disgruntled. If it doesn't form part of your normal process for when employees leave, we recommend changing any passwords they had access to; minimising any damage they could cause.

Step 6:

In the circumstance that the employee walks out with School property you should:

• Write to them and let them know you need the item(s) in question back advising them who to return the item(s) to and by what date
• If they don't respond or return the items by the date mentioned, and they still have monies to be paid, deduct the amount it costs you to replace the items from that total. To do this, you will need to make sure there's a contractual clause allowing you to do so
• If replacing the item(s) and deducting the cost isn't an option, as a last resort, you could contact the police.

Step 7:

If you are asked for a reference from the employee's future employer, you can mention that they refused to work their notice period.

So, those are the key points to consider if an employee resigns in writing; but what should you do if the resignation is verbal?

It is always better to get an employee's resignation in writing. However, if the employee verbally resigns and has been with you for less than two years, you will be safe from any potential ordinary unfair dismissal claims.

If any employee who has been with you for more than two years walks out with nothing but a verbal resignation, we recommend that you reach out to them to try to resolve the issue and get their resignation in writing.

If you try contacting them but you don't get a response, write them a final letter which includes:

• the School's acceptance of their verbal resignation
• reiteration of the dates you have previously tried contacting them, without a response
• the date on which their employment has been terminated
• to expect their P45 in the post.
  

If you’re looking for support with notice periods and employee management or would like to learn more about our model policies and letters, along with relevant training, please talk to us.