How Do You Handle Employee Absconding and Short Notice Without Hurting Team Performance?

Handling Employee Absconding and Insufficient Notice

I am working as a Corporate Senior HR Executive, handling recruitments, training, and employee engagement. I often encounter the following situation:

Sometimes employees do not give sufficient notice and leave early, or they abscond.

In such situations, all the pressure falls on the HR Department. The concerned head of the department starts saying we are not able to perform because we do not have sufficient staff. However, as HR professionals, we know recruitment is a process, not an event, and we need time to hire appropriate candidates. If one person is missing from their team, how does this affect the performance of the whole team? Moreover, why can't these people coordinate with the recruitment team by working a bit more for at least 10 days while the recruitment team searches for a new candidate, or is this just an excuse?

Please tell me some solutions to handle such situations, as I am really shocked to hear such answers from managers and general managers.

Regards, Sana

Steps to Handle Employee Absconding Situations

To deal with such situations, the following steps may be of some help:

1. Always do job rotation among employees so that everyone knows the other job. When an employee stops coming without notice, HR need not panic since there is someone ready to handle the tasks, even if it requires paying overtime.

2. The second step can be what Mr. Xavier Raj suggested. Keep a buffer of one employee, if your management permits it, who can be rotated among various jobs whenever a regular employee goes on leave.

3. Conduct exit interviews and try to understand why some employees are leaving abruptly. Take steps to amend or mend the situation to reduce attrition.

4. Don't hire in a hurry. You may hire the wrong candidate who may not stick around for long. Try to ascertain the candidate's expectations, needs, and cultural fit through sustained interaction to ensure you are not merely filling a vacancy but hiring a resource that will contribute to the organization.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
Mumbai

That's a good question mostly faced by recruiters. Saiconsult has given valuable suggestions in regards to it. I just want to add that you can prepare some recruitment-related policies which can outline the workings of a recruitment department. Additionally, you can establish a timeframe for recruiting a person after a manpower requisition is raised.

Currently, in our organization, we follow this practice, which helps us find a suitable candidate within a specified time frame. In contrast, the production or other departments may find ways to harass HR professionals because they do not consider HR as a valuable department in the organization.

So, don't worry and give your best.

Regards,
Vivek Ranaut

I suppose the appointment letter has a clause wherein an employee needs to serve a notice period when they resign. Don't pay them for that month if they are not ready to serve the company for that period of one or two months as per the company policy.

Ask for internal references; this helps in instant closures.

Ask the Department Manager to consider increasing the salary of the employee leaving, as recruitment involves time and money too. If they don’t agree, inform them that it is the company policy that the recruitment process for any position takes a minimum of 30 days to find an appropriate candidate who fits into the defined job description.

Please do keep a check on the job portals that you use for recruitment; whether the employees working in your organization have recently updated their resume (through company search). If yes, check whether they are seriously looking for a job change or have just updated their resume, and try to engage with them.

Understanding Employee Turnover

You need to first try to find out the reasons for which employees are leaving the company. You can set up a suggestion box where employees can share their concerns anonymously, as many people are more comfortable expressing their concerns without revealing their identity. This approach worked well for my company.

Good luck

Dear Sana, it is not about HR roles exactly, Sana; it's all about the policies and their acceptance by the entire staff and management, in fact. Take charge and issue a common notice covering the rules and regulations of the organization. Timing should be clearly defined, and actions or punishments to be taken by top management should be outlined if such actions are repeated by any employee during office hours. Seek the consent of your seniors and top management, and distribute these guidelines to various departments and areas of your organization. It is not up to any employee's discretion to leave the office or be absent without proper notice or permission. This is about the company's code of conduct and policies. Any employee engaging in such behavior is acting undisciplined.

Regards,
Manish Srivastava
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

In reply to Mr. p_xavierraj's suggestion, you can use that technique and, meanwhile, if you can spend time, you can also start arranging intervention with all the HODs and try to convince them to coordinate. This will increase, of course, your efforts but your strong rapport too. I may not be right, but this is just what I wanted to share.

Dear Sana,

The problem you raised is indeed very significant in the present-day situation. I suggest the following steps in this direction:

Reasons for Employee Migration

Employees normally migrate due to:
- Lack of job satisfaction
- Lack of concern by the management for the welfare of employees, which also includes their career progression.

Therefore, please hold exit interviews and also keep a watch on the pulse of employees to identify the cause of their dissatisfaction for leaving the organization. While doing so, you also need insight into your organization's culture and its contribution to the issue.

Some organizations keep original certificates of the selected employees. No comments on the ethics, but you may consider this practice too.

Regards,
S.K. Johri

While P. Xavier Raj, B. Saikumar, and other members have given very valid and realistic suggestions, there is also a lot of truth in what Ben Simonton mentioned.

Areas of Concern

You mentioned THREE areas of concern: (1) not giving sufficient notice, (2) leaving early, and (3) sometimes due to absconding. Please note that the causes/reasons for each of them could and most likely would be different. So, clubbing all three could lead you to erroneous conclusions. Like Ben Simonton mentioned, a lot depends on the organizational culture, which in turn depends on the people at the top, i.e., the management/managers.

Absconding

Regarding one of the causes you mentioned: absconding. Why would anyone take the trouble to 'abscond'? At the entry level, maybe he/she wouldn't be aware of the consequences of such an act, but after gaining some experience, the importance of experience/relieving letters would be known to them. Yet, if such employees 'abscond', there is obviously some fear about possible unfair treatment by the company if they reveal their plan to quit. This points to the management model in your company—non-transparency in employee relations, unethical/unfair practices, unfair salary/promotion hikes, or the lack of a clear policy on such issues, etc. Please note that I am NOT saying that all of these exist in your company—I am just pointing out the various possibilities. It's YOU who needs to figure out if any of them exist and how best to handle each core value/issue. However, there will always be exceptions among employees (incorrigible individuals, so to say)—if you do an exercise on how many of those who quit actually fall into this 'absconding' category, it will enable you to target the corrective mechanism properly and effectively.

Insufficient Notice and Leaving Early

Moving on to the other two causes you mentioned: insufficient notice and leaving early (both are largely the same unless you had a different context/situation in mind). This category of employees DO resign and give some response time for you/HR. I think this is where Exit Interviews suggested by the members will surely help you. But, frankly, a word of caution here. The result will depend on HOW THE EMPLOYEE VIEWS the Exit interview process. This, again, at the subconscious level, gets decided by the type of experiences he/she has had while working—if it has been one of suspicion (in attitudes or work or general behavioral patterns by the superiors), the chances of Exit Interviews being more a formality than of any REAL use are HIGH. He/she will give you the answers YOU WANT to hear—not what he/she ACTUALLY feels inside. I have seen BOTH types of situations—employees coming out with the ACTUAL reasons for quitting as well as giving some irrelevant information just for the HR to file his/her Report after the exercise. Hope you get the point.

HR/Training Policies

Another point/solution mentioned by the members was having formal HR/Training policies. More than having HR Policies, it's MORE IMPORTANT to focus on their proper, even-handed, and fair Implementation. Going by what you also mentioned ('...really get shocked hearing such answers from managers/general managers'), I think your problem is NOT the employees per se, but the Managers—especially if your 'absconding' figures are high.

All the Best.

Regards,
TS

I also faced the same problem in my job. Then, I fixed 15-20 days as the recruitment time period and also requested the exiting employee to give a 15 days to 1-month notice period. Additionally, I started mailing daily vacancy status updates to my boss and CEO to keep them updated on the efforts put in by the Recruitment or HR Department as a whole.

Try to engage in recruitment by reference, offering monetary and non-monetary rewards to your employees, as this will greatly assist you.

Hope this may help you.

Regards,
Nisha Malhotra

Whilst not knowing the exact working situation, I have found that in a difficult work environment, recruitment and retention of good employees can be strengthened by using some of the following:

Recruitment

- The letter of appointment must be detailed in expectations of notice periods. This can be difficult to enforce, so retention is all-important.
- Be honest with prospective employees about the conditions they can expect to be working under.
- Walk prospective employees through the working environment.
- Introduce them to one or two key people within the environment. If the problem is a personality clash, they may pick this up immediately and decline an offer of a position.
- Detailed checking of references. Phrase the questions so that if there have been problems with past employers, they will tell you.

Retention

- First-day inductions are vital to keeping good employees. By doing the inductions and building trust and open communication, a new employee will feel their contribution is valued.
- Meet them on the first day, take them through a detailed induction, and arrange a buddy system for the first week, perhaps more depending on the type of work they are doing.
- Speak to the supervisor and identify any settling-in issues with the new employee.
- Speak to the new employee at the finish of the first day, see how they are doing and settling in. Encourage them to talk to you about any difficulties they are having.
- Touch base either yourself or one of your staff with the new employee over the first two weeks.
- Undertake an interview at the end of the first week. Act upon any issues the employee has. This will not only build trust with the new employee, but other employees will recognize a change.

If the employee wishes to leave, meet with them—identify their reasons and attempt to resolve them.

Where resolution is not possible, undertake an exit interview. Ensure this is confidential and ensure the employee knows that by giving all the information possible, they will improve things for existing and new employees. Most employees are only too happy to write down their grievances.

Act on the information contained in the exit interview.

Perhaps provide feedback to the ex-employee of the outcome, and if they were a good employee, encourage them to reconsider with a view to re-employment.

Absenteeism - Is this a morale/motivation issue? Track where/who are absent and identify a pattern. Is it mainly in one or two areas? Could it be a difficult situation within the work environment—harassment, bullying, etc.?

Implement a policy and procedure regarding absenteeism where employees may be open to disciplinary action if they disregard the policy.

Does the employee have an ongoing personal problem? If they are a valued employee, can the company assist? Retention is cheaper than recruitment and retraining.

First thing first! Sit back and think...

Why Are Employees Leaving or Absconding?

Prepare a presentation and create awareness on this for HoDs and management. A flowing river can't be blocked for a long time; you have to channel the water for better usage. Hence, instead of continually recruiting manpower, think about why they are leaving. This is the only solution.

YES! Humans require enough courage to acknowledge their inability/weakness... The best way to be out of the problem is to BLAME OTHERS. That is the reason HR would be facing this issue.