What Is Job Abandonment? Employers Need To Know -Thehrboy

You need to imagine a scenario where most valuable staff members are on a no-call no-show one day, the next day, the day after, or even the day after.

A week goes by, and they have abandoned their job. You have limited ability to run the business, be unable to serve the clients properly, have severe scheduling issues, and are left with team members with minimum morale.

With trends including significant resignations showing up globally, scheduling managers should anticipate that unexcused absence is a number.

In extreme cases, job abandonment is generally inevitable, and policies should be established to help prevent all these issues from happening or even minimize the damage to a great extent.

In This Article

What Do You Mean By Job Abandonment, And Why Does It Happen?

Job amendment is when the employee leaves the company abruptly by not showing up to work a predetermined number of times.

The employer determines this quantity without any notification. It can also be considered voluntary resignation even though the employee might not have formally quit the job. It is assumed that the employee has no intention of returning to work by failing to communicate.

For instance, the employee might only show up for work for a few days and, consequently, without any explanation, might even stop replying to calls and emails or may have eradicated their belongings from the workstation.

Or an employee who is unpaid or has paid leave does not show up for three consecutive days after the holiday ends.

Causes Of Job Abandonment

There are specific reasons why people end up leaving their job abruptly, like Fear of quitting the job in person because of embarrassment.

The person would have got a better job with another employee.
An unexpected family or personal injury.
Dissatisfaction with the job because of the lack of recognition or poor company culture.
Fear of returning to work because of health or hygiene concerns.
Are negligent attitudes by the employee.

In some cases, the employee might have to leave for genuine reasons, and they would not even notify the employer.

For instance, they might have a medical emergency or lose access to the phone or the Internet if they are away on leave. Such situations require a lot of consideration before they are classified as job abandonment.

The Upside And Downside Of The Employment Relationship

One of the best ways for employers to attract and retain happy, hard-working people is to apply to their employees, providing skills and career development coaching, praise and appreciation for meaningful work, and monetary rewards for organizational success. These benefits are essential because the employment relationship is all about usefulness.

The more valuable the employer can be to its employees, the more it can satisfy their wants and needs, and the stronger the incentive will be for the employees to stay in the same company.

This is the basis of any employment relationship; employers and employees sometimes get along.

It is the only reason employees vanish without a word or worse with a dire tribe against their employers when people have personal connections; they’re always motivated to work through their conflicting interests with care, respect, and a willingness to compromise.

But if the relationship is about nothing but utility, if there is economic usefulness in all that matters, then there is no incentive to be courteous and understanding when conflicts arise.

The Role Of Hr

While retaining employees is not possible or desirable, HR still plays a crucial role here.

Address poor employee performance early.

When an employee is not getting their job done or meeting expectations, the easy answer is to terminate the employment.

Still, immediate termination with no warning or attempts by the employer to correct the performance sends the employee away with a chip on their shoulder and leaves the employer without perfect coverage. You can put the employee in a performance improvement plan as an alternative to immediate termination.

Solicit employee feedback

Most of the employees are generally unengaged or disengaged. Disengaged employees are most likely to complain about their jobs or even the bosses, but probably not to the employers. Some complaints might be legitimate, while others would just be bogus.

The solution is to collaborate with the employees to identify and address the problems well in the workplace. You can also solicit feedback through surveys, stay interviews, or exit interviews.

Employees will only be willing to share their concerns, but if they believe it is safe to do so, they trust that their employer will attempt to address them in good faith.

How Can You Oversee Job Abandonment?

Employers need to minimize the negative consequences of job abandonment for the business by having a job abandonment policy in place, and they should anticipate the problems it can create, including scheduling issues.

They have also to take steps to mitigate the effects of job abandonment, both before and after it happens. You can learn how to manage job abandonment by following the steps mentioned here.

Define the job abandonment policy very clearly.

You must create and communicate a company policy that dictates how many no-calls and show days qualify as job abandonment.

There is generally no federal law that defines job abandonment clearly, so it is your responsibility to provide clarity to the employees on what counts as job abandonment.

You also have to remind employees of the consequences of job abandonment and let them know that it will deprive them of unemployment benefits, as it is considered a voluntary resignation.

Follow a perfect investigation and termination procedure.

There should be a perfect investigation procedure for all job Abandonment, as employers would be responsible for ensuring the employee didn’t intend to return to work.

After investigating thoroughly and recording everything, employers need to follow a detailed termination process to mitigate liability to a great extent. To do this, some of the steps you need to follow are mentioned here.

Firstly, you must attempt to call the employee by phone or email and find out why they missed work. You need to understand whether they want to return to work or not by communicating with them.
If the first attempt is entirely unsuccessful, they have to make a second or third attempt after waiting for 24 hours or trying to contact employees’ emergency contact. After this, you must make as many attempts as essential to contact the employee until they have been absent for around a minimum of days, constituting job abandonment as defined in the company policy.
Ensure you accurately record all the attempts at communication with the absent employee. It would be best if you also had a reliable paper trail to fall back on in case of legal action.
If all the attempts at communication fail, you have to send a letter to the employee’s address mentioning the attempts to contact them along with the missed dates of work of the employee. You also have to include a notice if the employee does not respond to the letter within a given week, and their absence would be considered job abandonment.
If the employee still does not respond, then you have the absolute right to terminate the employment through the job appointment letter mentioning the reason behind the termination, the date and the times they were absent from company property to return, and a contact number if the employee has any queries regarding termination.
After notifying the employee of the termination of employment for job abandonment, double-check the payroll to ensure the terminated employee will get all they owe on the financial paycheck.
You can also consider using scheduling management software to cover all the abandonment shifts. You have to allow the employees to communicate freely with the scheduling managers so they can pick up their abandoned changes also. You must enable the shift to swap and cross-train employees to fill in for the staff members who have left their jobs.

It is also sensible to learn from the experience of job abandonment and plan the schedules as far as possible in the future.

You should also have a network of on-call employees to rely on in case of job abandonment so you have never faced any staff crisis.

Ensure That You Comply With All The Employment Laws.

You need to take some steps to confirm the job abandonment was indeed a voluntary resignation to avoid potential legal action. Dismissing any employee because of medical reasons can be challenging. It could also be scrutinized, so the job abandonment policy should address short-term disability and medical acts.

You have to clarify that if an employee does not come to work for three consecutive days, you should not file short-term disability paperwork or request any leave of absence based on a family emergency.

They would be abandoned from work. Employers need to be mindful that email and spam filters would lead to unread or skipped messages from the employee.

To avoid any scenario where a letter goes missing, employers need to consider using a single communication channel without spam filters to make it straightforward for the employees to communicate.

Be consistent in applying the abandonment policy.

It would be best if you had a documented job abandonment policy.

You have to record detailed notes of every unused absence and every attempt to contact the employee.

You must include a copy of the job amendment policy in the employee handbook and human resource portal.

There is no room for confusion among employees, and there should be no surprise employees are terminated.

How Can You Prevent Job Abandonment Proactively?

Job abandonment is generally challenging to deal with. One of the best ways of avoiding the negative consequence is to prevent it from happening in the first place by having some fair policies centered around inclusiveness that keep the employees engaged, and a good company culture that motivates employees to do their best work can help engage employees and prevent them from leaving the job.

Make the job abandonment policy visible.

You have to include the job abandonment policy in the employee handbook or explain it in detail when employees are being onboarded.

It is one of the best ways to make employees aware of the leave policies and the consequences of job abandonment.

The more knowledgeable the employees are, the better their chances of complying with the guidelines.

Have a lenient leave and absence policy

People often abandon their jobs because they are overworked, frustrated, and lack time.

A lenient leave policy complements the transparent job abandonment policy that allows the employees to get some time for rest.

Practice flexible scheduling

Allow the employees to pick up the open shifts or swap them with managerial approval so they can meet the personnel and finances besides professional commitments.

It would be best if you allowed the employees to do everything by equipping them with the proper mobile schedule and communication tools.

You also try to honor them as much as possible by using flexible scheduling policies.

Regularly communicate with your employees.

Handling job abandonment and preventing it from happening requires open and, of course, honest communication with your employees.

You have to treat communication as a two-way street. On the one hand, please provide feedback to employees to keep them engaged and, on the other hand, give employees the freedom to voice their concerns.

It is undoubtedly a two-way approach that will keep the employees involved while making them aware of glaring issues.

So you can, of course, take preventative measures to keep the abandonment issues away.

Key Takeaways

Job abandonment occurs when an employee fails to show up for work for an extended period of time without notifying their employer or providing a valid reason for their absence.

Job abandonment is different from resignation or termination, as it involves the employee’s failure to communicate with their employer about their absence.

Employers should have clear policies and procedures in place for dealing with job abandonment, including guidelines for contacting the absent employee and documenting the situation.

Before taking any action, employers should make reasonable efforts to contact the absent employee and provide them with an opportunity to explain their absence.

If the employee cannot be reached or does not provide a valid explanation for their absence, the employer may assume that the employee has abandoned their job.

Employers may be able to terminate an employee for job abandonment but should proceed with caution to ensure that they are not violating any laws or regulations.

Employers should document all efforts to contact the absent employee and any other relevant information about the situation, as this may be important in the event of legal action.

Employers may also want to consider implementing proactive measures to prevent job abandonment, such as maintaining open lines of communication with employees and addressing any issues or concerns they may have.

Conclusion

While no calls or no-shows are not the norm, they can be disruptive when they do occur. You must carefully develop all the policies and procedures to help your company prevent and respond to such situations.

It would be best if you always liaised with HR and legal professionals before sending the job abandonment letter to minimize the likelihood of the employee taking legal action against the business.

As absenteeism is inevitable, being an employer, you have to make it as simple as possible for the employees to communicate with you when they are not able to attend the workshop, and you also need to have a great system in place that can evidence the communication between you and the employees.

FAQs

How is job abandonment different from resignation or termination?

Job abandonment is different from resignation or termination because it involves the employee’s failure to communicate with their employer about their absence.

What should employers do if they suspect an employee has abandoned their job?

Employers should make reasonable efforts to contact the absent employee and provide them with an opportunity to explain their absence before taking any action.

If the employee cannot be reached or does not provide a valid explanation for their absence, the employer may assume that the employee has abandoned their job.

Can employers terminate an employee for job abandonment?

Employers may be able to terminate an employee for job abandonment but should proceed with caution to ensure that they are not violating any laws or regulations.

Employers should document all efforts to contact the absent employee and any other relevant information about the situation.

How can employers prevent job abandonment?

Employers may want to consider implementing proactive measures to prevent job abandonment, such as maintaining open lines of communication with employees and addressing any issues or concerns they may have.