How Should We Handle an Employee Breaking a Service Bond with Unusual Tactics?

Hi All,

Right now I am dealing with an interesting case. I need advice from my seniors on this.

We hired a girl in Feb with a one-year service bond, which was clearly communicated to her. She agreed, and the candidate looked smart, so we hired her.

Work-wise, she was okay.

After 2 months, she comes up with her resignation with immediate relieving, citing reasons of her marriage and mother's health.

Believing her conditions, we tried to help her and recommend waiver on medical grounds. We asked for her mother's medical documents, on which she started arguing relentlessly and did not submit papers. The interesting part is her marriage date (as told by her) was 7 months ahead, and she was not ready to extend her stay even by one day.

We requested for an extension, the reason being our process was very critical.

With the intention of helping her, we asked her to pay just the training cost, and we will release her with proper documents.

To our surprise, she replied she doesn't want any papers as she intends to join her fiance's business. She started threatening us to sue us in court.

As she was getting weirder, we asked her to leave for the day and deferred discussions for the next day. A complete U-turn from resignation to the intention of continuing.

The next day she comes up and asks for 2 months of "work from home," which anyways was not possible.

The same evening, we get a call from somebody posing as a newspaper reporter, again threatening us to publish news as harassment. On further probe, we found that he was her fiancée (he only said so). We pardoned the act as being "kiddish."

After 3 days, she writes an email to the MD of the company with personal allegations.

When we checked her emails, she was copying all her discussions with us to her personal IDs.

Please suggest the right course of action.

Yogita

Hi Yogita,

Very Kiddish indeed!!

Anyways, lets talk about the solutions here...

# Pardoning the act on grounds of being kiddish is not right on the part of employer, if she is building up her case( as she is sending all her mails to personal id) than you need to act smart rather than just reacting to her behavioral problems.

# Communicate everything through emails, and make sure there is no loopholes from your side while communication, the best way is to stick to facts.

# Write a mail asking her to provide medical docs of her mother's illness and state clearly that as she wants to leave job before completing one year she has to pay the cost of training which is mentioned in clause no such and such...also inform her that work from home facility is not available in your company.

# You did not write what was the content of mail to MD, what kind of personal allegation and how did MD react to such mails.

# Counsel her, be a friend and ask her the reasons of such behavior and how such things can impact her in future. If you cannot do it involve someone who can.

# Issue a warning letter for the call from her fiancée.

# Last thing, do you think employees like her are value addition to company? is she putting in her efforts and performing since all these discussions. There is no point keeping her in the company, address the issue verbally within the closed wall with no cell phones and other gadgets.

Hope it will be of help....

Immediate Action Required for Employee Misconduct

Get rid of such individuals immediately. Forget the cost your company has incurred on her training. If you prolong her stay, she will cause more harm to the organization, including potential data transfer.

Regards,